Iraq, Aborigines & Greenhouse

A LEADING Australian political journalist recently very accurately put his finger on the extraordinary pragmatism and finance-linked selfishness of the White Australian electorate (after observing that only one Australian soldier had died in Iraq, apparently by accident): “In the absence of bodies coming home in bags from Baghdad there is no way that this conflict is going to be a major determinant of how Australians vote.”

Unfortunately this view of this very experienced journalist has been absolutely correct up to the present. Thus the outspoken  former Labor Opposition Leader Mark Latham has made exactly the same assessment in his controversial, post-retirement  and “searingly honest” tell-all  "The Latham Diaries" (Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2005). In the last paragraph on the last page of the book,  a final point #6 on how the Labor Party can to win the next election stated: "And, finally, stay away from Iraq - this is not a vote-switching issue."

But how far does such cynicism go?  How ignorant, greedy, stupid, dishonest, immoral and racist IS the White Australian electorate? 

Before attempting to answer these questions it is important to note that (a) there is compulsory voting in Australian elections except for the very old  – even those overseas need to offer an explanation for not voting to avoid a fine; (b) racist, lying, corporate mainstream media keep the truth about horrendous excess deaths in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories from  ordinary Australians, although the awful truth is slowly emerging; and (c) it appears that most Australians despise our politicians in general.

What follows below is a summary of what Australians mostly should know from reading major newspapers such as “The Age” in Melbourne or accessing international  Alternative media (e.g. MWC News). “The Age” in particular has an outstanding cartoonist Michael Leunig who, like myself, is deeply concerned at the horrendous loss of life in US-UK-Australia-occupied Iraq (current post-invasion excess deaths 0.9 million) and keeps this continuing crime before his audience. I don’t have much of an audience in Australia – a Google search for Gideon Polya will bring up only about 250 URLs within Australia but elicits 35,000 around the world  (thanks to ethical media such as MWC News I have been able to tell the world of the latest horrifying estimates of excess deaths due to US-Israeli state terrorism) (e.g. see MWC News).

The recent publication in a top medical journal The Lancet by a top US medical epidemiology group of their estimate of 655,000 post-invasion (0.7 million)  excess deaths in Occupied Iraq has given added strength to Michael Leunig’s humanitarian pen as well as providing some added reassurance to me because there are horrifying laws potentially constraining free speech in Australia.  Thus last year in a submission on proposed draconian Sedition Laws to a Senate Inquiry a top linguistics scholar Dr Stephen Morey named Michael Leunig, Professor Chomsky (US), Professor Bello (Philippines) and MWC News’ Dr Gideon Polya as most likely to run foul of these laws that provide 7 years in prison for saying things that the government of the day  doesn’t like (see submissions #84 and #112 ).

What White Australia still tolerates includes: 

the cost accounting estimate of the cost of the War on Terror to Australia is $20 billion (not including interest or tens of billions of dollars of lost wheat sales to Iraq and noting that the accrual costing will be vastly greater);

the AWB scam (the Australian Wheat Board company scammed US$250 million in bribes from the UN Oil-for-Food program in Sanctions-crippled Iraq) has trashed our international commercial reputation – Australian government, corporations and bureaucracy are seen as corrupt at worst, incompetent at best; the human cost of the AWB scam is estimated at up to 21,000 Iraqi infant lives;