Extracts from Irregular Gipsland Peace Newsletter, No. 46 May-August 2008:

Irregular Gippsland Peace Newsletter Summary

No.46 May-August 2008
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Peter Gardner (ed) c/-PO Swifts Creek Australia 3896

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The War and the Price of Fuel

Since the war in Iraq began there have been restrictions on supply of oil. Iraq is currently producing about 2 mill. barrels per day (bpd) whereas before the war the production level was 3.5 mill. bpd. World oil supply is consequently reduced by this amount. Further the uncertainty of supply is heightened in particular by the continuing threats against Iran - the fourth largest exporter of petroleum. Any such disruption in the Middle East - in particular if the Persian Gulf was closed or became a war zone would see oil price climb to astronomical levels. In the United States the threat of 'stagflation' looms.

From the outset the war in Iraq has been financed in the US by loose monetary policy at home and borrowing from abroad. This has led to a declining dollar and increased inflation in the US. In most instances this inflation is exported to other nations by higher fuel and commodity prices.

The price of fuel is in a major part the legacy of Bush, Blair and Howard's Iraq adventure. Unfortunately there seems no way out of the spiralling fuel costs and the Rudd government may find themselves the recipients of the eventual backlash in the electorate. It remains a puzzle why neither the ALP nor the media have spoken about the war and the price of oil in any meaningful way.

Labour's Actions

Whilst the Australian Defence Forces are technically no longer on combat duty in Iraq there are still over 1000 military personnel - many of them on HMAS Anzac. Whilst the belligerent attitude to Iran remains a priority of the US administration the ships in the Gulf are at high risk of a sudden attack or being involved in a wider conflict, regardless of whether it commences by accident or design. These sailors are certainly the largest and most vulnerable group of Australian forces overseas. Perhaps the most recent of Rudd's statements that we went to war under false intelligence - something even Blind Freddy knew in 2002 - may make the electorate consider what other effects the war had and is continuing to have on them. One wonders how long it will take for the war parties to admit their folly.

The (Good and Bad) Middle East War News

1. The former Prime Minister of Malaysia Mohammed Mahathir "speaking at (the) Imperial College in London... singled out US President George Bush, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australia's former prime minister John Howard as he wants to see them tried in absence for war crimes committed in Iraq". (ICH 27/4) (see also Monbiot & Kampmark below)

2. Australian combat troop involvement in Iraq has officially ended. (3/6 various)

The Murdoch Boycott & other Media News

In a brief Internet article Richard Neville asks: "can't we have scandals over things that matter more than budding pubic hair, like an $80 million corporate bonus being considered "fair", or that a sole tycoon can manipulate the media on several continents and be lauded." Counterpunch 27/5. See also below

New Anti War Australian Veterans Group Formed

Stand Fast is encouraging serving members of the Australian Defence Force to inform themselves about what is really happening in Iraq and Afghanistan and is prepared to provide advice and support for those who may question serving in these wars.

The anti-war group currently has members in Adelaide, Brisbane, Hobart, Melbourne and Sydney.

For further information
phone 0401 586 923,
email standfast.au@gmail.com
or visit http://www.stand-fast.webs.com
(thanks MAPW Newsletter)

Richard Neville and the Bill Henson Controversy

In a short article published on Counterpunch.com (27/5) Richard Neville exposed the hypocrisy in our society with regards child exploitation and art. In particular Neville notes: "Kids are not protected when subjected to U.S. air strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan, or when they are blown up by old American cluster bombs in Laos and Cambodia, which happens often and is reported rarely, because most of the space in the newspaper is devoted to the the Beckhams or Paris or Britneys' public meltdowns and the latest baby-bump sightings. Why pick on an art photographer when the substance which powers our whole society-oil-is starting to dry up."

Oil: A Global Crisis

The Iraq War means oil costs three times more than it should, says a leading expert.
How are our lives going to change as we struggle to cope with the $200 barrel?
By Geoffrey Lean

New Element on the Periodic Table

A major research institute has just announced the discovery of the densest element yet known to science. The new element has been named the "Bushcronium". Buchcronium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 311.

These particles are held together by dark forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. The symbol for Bushcronium is "W". Buchcronium's mass actually increases over time, as morons randomly interact with various elements in the atmosphere and become assistant deputy neutrons in a Bushcronium molecule, forming isodopes.

This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to believe that Bushcronium is formed whenever morons reach a certain level of concentration. This is hypothetically referred to as "Critical Morass".

When catalysed with money, Buchcronium activates Foxnewsium, an element that radiates orders of magnitude more energy, albeit as incoherent noise, since it has half as many peons, but twice as many morons. (Peace Priorities May/June 08)

War Criminals Must Fear Punishment.

by George Monbiot (excerpt)

3/6/08 "The Guardian"

"... I had no intention of arresting John Bolton, the former under-secretary of state at the US state department, when I arrived at the Hay festival. But during a panel discussion about the Iraq war, I remarked that the greatest crime of the 21st century had become so normalised that one of its authors was due to visit the festival to promote his book. I proposed that someone should attempt a citizens' arrest, in the hope of instilling a fear of punishment among those who plan illegal wars.

After the session I realised that I couldn't call on other people to do something I wasn't prepared to do myself. I knew that I was more likely to be arrested and charged than Mr Bolton. I had no intention of harming him, or of acting in any way that could be interpreted as aggressive, but had I sought only to steer him gently towards the police I might have faced a range of exotic charges, from false imprisonment to aggravated assault. I was prepared to take this risk. It is not enough to demand that other people act, knowing that they will not.

If the police, the courts and the state fail to prosecute what the Nuremberg tribunal described as "the supreme international crime", I believe we have a duty to seek to advance the process. The Nuremberg principles, which arose from the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, define as an international crime the "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances".

Bolton appears to have "participated in a common plan" to prepare for the war (also defined by the principles as a crime) by inserting the false claim that Iraq was seeking to procure uranium from Niger into a state department factsheet.... http://www.monbiot.com

The High Cost of a Single War-Like Remark by Dave Lindorff (8/6)

Chaos in Afghanistan by Brian Cloughley

The Yellow Press by William S. Lind

John Howard and War Crimes by Binoy Kampmark

From:


a project of the Nation Institute

Tomdispatch.com is for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of our post-9/11 world and a clear sense of how our imperial globe actually works.
Read more about the site's founder and editor Tom Engelhardt and his guest authors.
Click here to e-mail Tom.

Having the "Best Military" Is Not Always a Good Thing

Reclaiming Our Citizen-Soldier Heritage

By William J. Astore

Click here to read more of this dispatch.

Why is Gordon Brown Repeating a Mistranslation ?

By The Editor, Information Clearing House

The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has never called for Israel "to be wiped off the map". This has been confirmed by many Iranian language experts. That the mainstream media have repeated and echoed the original mistranslation from 2005 attests to their bias and hidden agenda.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20339.htm

'Wiped off the Map' – The Rumor of the Century
by Arash Norouzi

Across the world, a dangerous rumor has spread
that could have catastrophic implications.
According to legend,
Iran's president has threatened to destroy Israel,
or, to quote the misquote, "Israel must be wiped off the map."
Contrary to popular belief, this statement was never made.

The Real Power Behind the Throne-to-Be:

Barack Obama as the candidate promising change is revealing his true colors, much to the despair of anyone actually expecting any change.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/07/the-real-power-behind-the-throne-to-be/

Obama, The Prince Of Bait-And-Switch

By John Pilger

John Pilger describes the denigration of the of civilian casualties in colonial wars, and the anointing of Barack Obama, as he tours the battlefields, sounding more and more like George W. Bush.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20347.htm

The 25 Most Vicious Iraq War Profiteers

The Iraq war is many things to different people. It is called a strategic blunder and a monstrous injustice and sometimes even a patriotic mission, much to the chagrin of rational human beings.

For many big companies, however, the war is something far different: a lucrative cash-cow.

http://www.businesspundit.com/the-25-most-vicious-iraq-war-profiteers/

From International World Television - The Real News

Obama's excellent adventure

For the Pentagon, it's all about long term bases view

The Audacity of Imperial Airbrushing:

Barack Obama's Whitewashed History of U.S. Foreign Policy

By Paul Street

"In Obama's world view, as in that of his Harvard friend and former foreign policy adviser Samantha Power, American crimes generally don't exist. They didn't happen."
Denial is serious business.
"Candidate Obama's foreign policy pronouncements have been loaded with promises of future criminality under an Obama administration."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20257.htm

===

A People's History of American Empire

By Howard Zinn

Empire or Humanity?
What the Classroom Didn't Teach Me about the American Empire
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20258.htm

US 'planned to test
nerve gas on diggers'

By Ross Coulthart, SUNDAY

11:00 AEST Sat Jul 5 2008

SUNDAY website

Top secret US military plans to test deadly nerve gas by dropping it on soldiers in a remote Queensland rainforest during the Cold War have been uncovered in Australian Government archives.

Newly declassified Australian Defence Department and Prime Minister’s office files show that the United States was strongly pushing the Government for tests on Australian soil of two of the most deadly chemical weapons ever developed, VX and GB — better known as Sarin — nerve gas.

The plan, which is disclosed for the first time on tomorrow’s SUNDAY program on Nine, called for 200 mainly Australian combat troops to be aerially bombed and sprayed with the chemical weapons — with all but a handful of the soldiers to be kept in the dark about the "full details" of the tests.

A former senior official with then Prime Minister Harold Holt, Mr Peter Bailey, tells the program that as far as he knows the tests never went ahead but the planning was very advanced.

He admitted the whole operation was to be kept secret because use of such weapons was almost certainly illegal under international law at the time.

"The idea that we could actually… that the Australians could countenance such an activity is …unacceptable," University of NSW toxicologist Professor Chris Winder said.

He says even a fraction of a drop of either chemical on exposed skin could have been fatal and Cold War fears that communist Chinese or Russian attackers might have used such weapons in a third world war "doesn’t justify it now and I don’t think it justified it then".

The files show that in July 1962 the then-US defence secretary Robert McNamara wrote in secret to the Australian Defence Department suggesting joint testing of chemical weapons "on a classified basis without a public release by either country".

In early 1963 a survey team of Australian and US scientists reviewed sites in Australia for chemical warfare tests, suggesting the remote Iron Range rainforest near Lockhart River in far north Queensland as one such location.

The request caused consternation in Canberra, with senior Defence bureaucrats clearly opposed to the use of nerve gas, but, as former senior Prime Ministerial policy advisor Peter Bailey recalls: "I heard that many times in Cabinet meetings that if they weren’t pretty good and pretty faithful to the Americans we would be dumped.

"We had already been dumped with the British east of Suez pullout so ministers were pretty aware this was our one main support and the red peril thing was still in people’s minds."

In October 1964 the Americans pushed the request again, this time insisting that the public should be fed a "cover story" to conceal the real nature of the tests: the documents show the public was to be told the tests were to test equipment or land reclamation in a jungle environment.

Low-flying military aircraft and spraying was to be explained away with the false claim that low-risk herbicides and insecticides were to be used in the testing but the cover stories were clearly untrue — the real chemicals to be used were two of the most deadly man-made substances, VX and GB nerve gas.

Former Democrat Senator Lyn Allison, who became aware of the existence of references to secret chemical weapons tests in Australia during her support of sick former veterans of the Maralinga nuclear bomb tests, told SUNDAY that her own attempts to get the full story on what went on with proposed testing were rebuffed several years ago.

She said Government files on the issue were still classified even now and the revelations in the new documents obtained by SUNDAY underlined the need for the Defence Department to finally disclose all that went on during the Cold War.

"To understand that Australia was still prepared to consider this proposal because of its relationship with the US I think needs proper examination," Senator Allison told the program.

"So all those documents should be released, there shouldn’t be any pussy footing around — it’s time for us to know what went on."

SUNDAY’s expose of Australia’s secret planning for chemical warfare airs at 7.30am Sunday on Nine.

We, the Salt of the Earth, Take Precedence

By Paul Craig Roberts

The slaughtering of foreigners doesn’t seem to bother the American public. Americans take it for granted that Americans are superior and that American purposes, whatever they be, take precedence over the rights of other people to life and to a political existence independent of American hegemony.

Continue

'When John McCain was my captive'

By Andrew Harding
BBC News in Haiphong, Vietnam

So is Mr Duyet implying that that Senator McCain lied about his treatment at the Hanoi Hilton? -

"He did not tell the truth," he says.

Continue

Billion-Dollar Babies

Five Stealth Pentagon Contractors Reaping Billions of Tax Dollars

By Nick Turse

The top Pentagon contractors, like death and taxes, almost never change. ..... massive arms dealers Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman ranked one, two, and three among Department of Defense contractors......Other regulars receiving mega-tax-funded payouts in a similarly clockwork-like manner include defense giants General Dynamics, Raytheon, the British weapons maker BAE Systems, and former Halliburton subsidiary KBR, as well as BP, Shell, and other power players from the military-petroleum complex

......Then there's a select group that are masters of the universe in the ever-expanding military-corporate complex, regularly scoring more than a billion tax dollars a year from the Department of Defense.

Unlike Lockheed, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman, however, most of these billion-dollar babies manage to fly beneath the radar of media (not to mention public) attention. If appearing at all, they generally do so innocuously in the business pages of newspapers.

When it comes to their support for the Pentagon's wars and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, they are, in media terms, missing in action.

So, who are some of these mystery defense contractors you've probably never heard of? ...........

When the history of the Iraq War is finally written, chances are that these five billion-dollar babies, and most of the other defense contractors involved in making the U.S. occupation possible, will be left out.

Until we begin coming to grips with the role of such corporations in creating the material basis for an imperial foreign policy, we'll never be able to grasp fully how the Pentagon works and why we so regularly make war in, and carry out occupations of, distant lands.

Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of Tomdispatch.com.

He has written for the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Adbusters, the Nation, and regularly for Tomdispatch.com.

His first book, The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, an exploration of the new military-corporate complex in America, was recently published by Metropolitan Books.

His website, Nick Turse.com has been newly revamped and expanded.

Continue

The Coming Catastrophe?

The finishing touches on several contingency plans for attacking Iran

By David DeBatto

. . . If the United States attacks Iran either this summer or this fall, the American people had better be prepared for a shock that may perhaps be even greater to the national psyche (and economy) than 9/11.

First of all, there will be significant U.S. casualties in the initial invasion.

American jets will be shot down and the American pilots who are not killed will be taken prisoner - including female pilots.

Iranian Yakhonts 26, Sunburn 22 and Exocet missiles will seek out and strike U.S. naval battle groups bottled up in the narrow waters of the Persian Gulf with very deadly results.

American sailors will be killed and U.S. ships will be badly damaged and perhaps sunk. We may even witness the first attack on an American Aircraft carrier since World War II.

That’s just the opening act. . . .

Continue

Japanese Lawmaker Takes

9/11 Doubts Global

By JOHN SPIRI
Special to The Japan Times

Fujita, along with a growing number of individuals — including European and American politicians — are leading a charge to conduct a thorough, independent investigation of
what really happened on Sept. 11, 2001.

Continue

Ex-PM Vo Van Kiet passes away aged 86

Former Viet Nam Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet died on Wednesday at the age of 86, after a long illness. Kiet was one of the architects of the "doi moi" movement of reform in the late '80s.

He was born on November 23, 1922 in the southern Mekong Delta province of Vinh Long. From an early age, he devoted his life to the liberation and reconstruction of the country.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said he learned about the death of Vo Van Kiet with profound sadness.

Kiet was one of the revolutionary leaders in south Viet Nam during the resistance wars against the French colonialists and US imperialists.
After reunification, Kiet became Mayor of HCMC (old Saigon), and later Prime Minister from 1991-1997.

Vu Quoc Tuan, one of Kiet's assistants, described the former PM as a visionary leader who could mobilise talent from different sources for the country's development.

"He was a man whose death will leave a vacuum in the lives of many people every morning when they wake up and think of him." - writer Nguyen Ngoc.

"He will be remembered by everyone." - Singapore's Lee Kwan Yew.

For those who still believe the false propaganda that the American War against Viet Nam was about "North versus South" (it was not!), since 1945 when Ho Chi Minh declared the independence of modern Viet Nam, most or perhaps all Prime Ministers of Viet Nam have been southerners.

[FULL STORY]

The Perfect Spy author pays tribute to national hero
Emotions and nostalgia could be heard in American author Larry Berman's voice as he spoke of Pham Xuan An yesterday, the subject of his book 'The Perfect Spy', which brought the author to the capital Hanoi.

"An lived an amazing life, a life of espionage, of spying, and of friendship," said Berman at the Vietnam News Agency’s conference hall yesterday morning as he addressed a crowd of war veterans, journalists, writers, historians, film critics and students.

"I wonder how it was possible that a spy like him could have so many friends. This is one of so many mysteries in his life."

The crowd had gathered to meet and talk with the American author about the book that has become a phenomenon in Viet Nam since its domestic release nine months ago. The book was published in the US in July last year with 20,000 copies and has since been reprinted.

Berman studied An’s life as a professor of political science at the University of California-Davis, and has devoted his career to understanding the American War.

The story follows the double life of An, a reporter for Time magazine and a Vietnamese secret agent. During the American War in Viet Nam, he worked as a well-respected journalist and a communist intelligence agent.

"I am so proud to be the first historian to write about him. One day, younger generations will write even better books about An with more access to historical documents, but someone has to take the first step and I’m happy to do it."

His story has also caught the interest of various American film-makers based on the book, and Berman dreams that it will be filmed in Viet Nam.

"What I appreciate the most in his personality was his mental discipline. He went to work every day for Time magazine and had daily contact with CIA agents but no one ever suspected he was a spy."

An began his military career in the 1950s as a member of the Viet Nam People’s Army. Once the French left the country, the Vietnamese army sent him to America to study journalism and to observe its people and culture. There, he attended community college in California, worked for the Sacramento Bee, interned at the United Nations, and travelled across the country making friends.

In the 1960s, An returned to Viet Nam to work as a reporter for Reuters and Time magazine while providing intelligence to the Vietnamese army fighting against the US invasion of south Viet Nam. His dual-life continued for 20 years.

The Vietnamese Government awarded him six orders and he was named a Hero of the People’s Army. He is one of only two intelligence officers during the war ever promoted to General and named a Hero. He died last September in HCM City.

"Perfect Spy is my favourite book," Berman confided.

"An taught me things about Viet Nam that I thought I had known but I didn’t understand it. I had seen Viet Nam but didn’t really understand Viet Nam until I met An."


[FULL STORY]




From:
Viet Nam News, English-language daily
June 13, 2008
http://vietnamnews.vnanet.vn/