“Lerderderg Gorge” Painting – Australia takes new turn?

Bush ally John Howard, is trailing badly in the vote count

Australia voted in the 2007 Federal Elections on Saturday November 24, 2007. The principal opponents, the Major Parties, were the incumbent, Bush-ite, Liberal Party-National Party Coalition Government versus the timid, “me-too”, unprincipled, poll-driven Labor Party Opposition. On the side-lines were Minor Parties, most notably the highly principled, pro-Planet, Pro-Humanity, pro-Peace Australian Greens and Australian Democrats.

Realistically, only the extreme right-wing Bush-ite Coalition or right-wing Labor could form the New Government. However Australia’s preferential voting system allows people with a conscience to vote #1 Green and give their #2 preference to cowardly Labor – when the Greens fail to get a majority in an electorate  their votes are transferred to the #2 preference. Decent, anti-War, anti-greenhouse gas  pollution, anti-racism Australians could thus “have their cake and eat it too”.

The result has been a crushing victory for the Australian Labor Party led by Kevin Rudd (see the reports in the leading Australian newspaper, The Age, , The key features of the election victory are as follows:

Labor had a national swing of 5.7%;

Labor will have a likely majority of 24 seats;

ex-PM, Bush ally John Howard, is trailing badly in the vote count for his ownseat of Bennelong  and may indeed lose his seat to former Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) journalist Maxine McKew;

for the first time Labor now holds government in every state , territory AND at Commonwealth level;.

for the first time a woman, Julia Gillard, will be Deputy Prime Minister;

there was a roughly 10% vote for the Australian Greens (indeed many Labor candidates won because of Green preferences) and there may be much greater Green representation in the Australian Senate. 

I have a personal stake in this Election because Australia has draconian Sedition Laws and I have actually been named by a very decent, humanitarian,  top linguist in a Senate Inquiry Submission as a potential victim of this legislation because of my resolute anti-racist, pro-Peace, anti-war humanitarian advocacy (see submission #84). I feel much more comfortable now that the grossly human rights-abusing and civil rights- abusing Bush-ites have been trounced.

Inspired by Polish hero Jan Karski who tried to tell an unresponsive world about the Jewish Holocaust (6 million victims) while it was happening (to the best of my knowledge it killed all but about a dozen members of my family), I have dropped most things and devoted a huge amount of time as a public service over the last 4 years trying to inform an unresponsive world (mainstream media, mainstream politician, alternative media, and alternative politicians) about the ever-increasing toll of "excess deaths" in Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan.

The Silence has been Deafening – from both the Australian Mainstream media and from the Mainstream politicians. But will this continue under a Rudd Labor Government? – it very likely will unless Australians now  insist on the truth..

'Lerderderg Gorge' Painting

My estimates in this book published in mid-2007 about excess mortality in Occupied Iraq have had to be revised upwards. Recent authoritative estimates of violence-related post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Iraq (as of November 2007) are of 1.2 million (from the expert UK ORB polling company) and 0.8 million (from the top US Bloomberg School of Public Health group at Johns Hopkins University (who estimated 0.6 million violent deaths as of July 2006).

Authoritative estimates of non-violent post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Iraq as of November 2007 are of 0.7 million (from the latest UN Population Division data) and of 0.8 million (calculated from United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, data on post-invasion under-5 year old infant deaths; for impoverished Third World countries the under-5 infant deaths are about 0.7 of the total excess deaths, as described in the  MWC News article “Layperson’s Guide to Counting Iraq Deaths”).

We can now estimate total  post-invasion violent and non-violent occupied Iraqi excess deaths and these clearly range from 0.7 million  + 0.8 million  = 1.5 million (minimum estimate) to 0.8 million  + 1.2 million  = 2.0 million (upper estimate). The post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 0.6 million and there are 4 million refugees  (see "Iraq : Genocide by all definition. Bush's Iraq War. 2 million Iraqi excess deaths" on MWC News) .

Conservative Republican "Father of Reaganomics" Dr Paul Craig Roberts talks of the "Iraqi Genocide" (and demands a halt by dumping the US dollar). Outstanding UK-Australian writer John Pilger writes of "holocaust denial" over the "Iraqi Genocide". After years of publishing outrageously under-estimated media reports of Iraq casualties, AntiWar.com has given in to pressure from people such as myself and now reports the post-invasion Iraqi deaths estimates of JustForeignPolicy.org (currently over 1.1 million). After 4 years of resolute advocacy – much of it published by the ethical, humanitarian MWC News – I am now not alone.

Yet lying, racist, holocaust-ignoring, Bush-ite Mainstream media and politicians in Australia and other countries of the US Alliance still ignore this horrendous actuality in a process of continuing holocaust denial and genocide denial – just as the world ignored the actuality of the Jewish Holocaust 65 years ago.

This outrage was almost completely ignored by Australian mainstream media and hence by Australia that is voted in the 2007 Federal Election.. The major Parties, Coalition and Labor, refused to mention the war (in a real-life realization of the famous British comedy “Fawlty Towers” starring John Clease as Basil Fawlty in which he famously said “don’t mention the war’). Australians are generally oblivious  to the horrendous carnage in which its Bush-ite Government has made Australians complicit.

Indeed the only current publication mentioning this in Australia at the moment is a book “Lies, Deep Fries, & Statistics” (edited Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007) that carries a chapter by me entitled “Australian Complicity in Iraq Mass Mortality” ( transcript of the broadcast from which this entry was derived ).

The Rest is Silence. Will Rudd continue the holocaust-ignoring Silence?

The accompanying image of my large (55.9 cm x 76.2 cm) painting “Lerderderg Gorge #1” is of a very beautiful, deserted part of My Country, the Lerderderg Gorge north of Melbourne. The Lerderderg River winds through steep, tree-covered slopes, and every twist of its course yields another extraordinarily beautiful vista. I love my native land, currently in the grip of the worst drought in its history, widely believed to be exacerbated by greenhouse gas-driven global warming.

In the words of our great poet Dorothea Mackellar:

While the Iraqi Genocide has not been mentioned before or during the 2007 Australian Federal Election, climate change was a major issue. The climate criminal Bush-ite Coalition Government denied the scientists’ reports (e.g. those of the IPCC, the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change)  as “alarmist” up to this year, refused to sign Kyoto and refused to cut greenhouse gas pollution.  The newly-elected Labor Party refuses to seriously curb the coal industry short-term (Australia is one of the world’s major per capita greenhouse gas polluters and is the world’s #1 coal exporter) but WILL sign Kyoto and will promote renewable energy sources (to 20% renewables by 2020).

However the Australian Greens (who hopefully will now have a much bigger say in Australian affairs) are really serious about the  situation – and it IS extremely serious as outlined in the “summary of the Summary for Policymakers of the Synthesis Report of the IPCC Fourth Assessment (AR4)”. Australia and the World are facing an acutely serious climate change crisis.  The Green policies are to dramatically increase renewables, slash coal mining and to reach a  requisite 80% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution by 2050.

Unfortunately newly-elected Labor has committed to a grossly insuffuficient 60% GHG reduction by 2050 – a level that will reduce Australia’s huge annual per capita GHG pollution to about twice that of the World and of China – recalling the horrible racist pronouncement of former Australia Labor Immigration Minister Arthur Calwell back in 1947: “Two Wongs do not make a White”.

Decent Australians are delighted by the victory but have no illusions. In his victory speech Rudd specifically re-affirmed Australia’s commitment to the bloody US Alliance (25 million excess deaths in post-1950 US Asian Wars) but promised during the Election Campaign that Australia will withdraw from Occupied Iraq (after obsequious negotiations with the Americans).

However Rudd has foreshadowed increasing Australia’s commitment to the violent Occupation of Afghanistan (post-invasion excess deaths totalling 3-6 million). Pro-Zionist Rudd supported Apartheid Israel when it was bombing and shelling 25,000 Australian citizens in Lebanon in mid-2006 and recently made false and dangerous assertions about Iran (particularly dangerous in view of the horrendous, sustained, violent  threats to Iran from Bush America and Apartheid Israel).

Just as my beloved Lerderderg River dramatically twists and turns through the beautiful Lerderderg Gorge, so the River that is Australian public life has taken another dramatic turn -  there is a promised prospect  of greater support for Education and for  Renewable Energy and the promise of greater Humanity (more equitable Health and Industrial Relations, withdrawal from Occupied Iraq and cessation of the Pacific Island Prisons for Muslim refugees). 

However will the Rudd Government address the fundamental problem in Australian public life – the entrenched LYING by Omission? Rational risk management successively involves  (a) accurate information, (b) scientific analysis and (c) systemic change to minimize risk. Australia will now have 3 years under a right-wing, Zionist beholden, US-beholden, Mainstream media- and Rupert Murdoch-beholden  Labor Government with a long track record of lying by omission.

I will continue to do my bit to get through the Mainstream media and politician Wall of Silence in Australia and around the world. Will Australia remain the Land of Lies and Flies?  Watch this space - I’ll let you know.

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