“Gideon Polya, “Rudd Oz Honeymoon Over before it Began. Me-too Rudd Labor re-commits Australia to US War Crimes”, MWC News, 1 December 2007.
Rudd Oz Honeymoon Over before it Began. Me-too Rudd Labor re-commits Australia to US War Crimes
The Australian Labor Party under right-wing Kevin Rudd has achieved a huge Federal Election victory over the war criminal, extreme right-wing Bush-ite Coalition under John Howard (who have lost his own seat in the Federal Parliament).
Kevin Rudd is earnest, articulate, polite and an ideas-man. However he has also had to be an astute politician to have brought off this huge election victory (dubbed by wits as a Rudd-slide) with a substantially very selfish, mercenary and xenophobic electorate subject to a lifetime of neo-con brainwashing by the egregiously racist and dishonest Mainstream media (70% of city daily newspapers are owned by ex-Australian US citizen Rupert Murdoch aka the Dirty Digger, the king-maker who effectively “owns” this Antipodean ”Murdochracy”).
Kevin Rudd has been called “Me-too” Rudd because of his acceptance of so many of the conservative positions of his Bush-ite Coalition opponents. Nevertheless there were apparent differences – the Bush-ite Coalition would not sign Kyoto (Rudd will), was committed to an environmentally-damaging pulp mill in beautiful but increasingly despoiled Tasmania (Rudd ditto) and was “all the way” with war criminal Bush in continued Occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan (“Me-too” Rudd was only committed to the latter theatre but will retain SOME troops in Occupied Iraq).
After an election there is a week’s delay while the last votes are being counted but on Monday 3 December, 9 days after the 24 November 2007 election, Rudd’s Government will be sworn in. Rudd has gotten off the mark very quickly beforehand, declaring that his Government will have “measurement-based” and “evidence-based” policies and that he will demand Report Cards (like at school) from his Ministers, indicating how policy is being implemented.
I have been writing to Kevin Rudd and his colleagues for 4 years, giving them facts and figures and pleading for exactly that - “measurement-based” and “evidence-based” policy. I am going to send Progress Report Cards to these same people in the newly-elected Rudd Government – but with renewed enthusiasm given their ostensible preparedness (not hitherto terribly evident) to respond to facts and figures in the national interest.
Normally there is a Honeymoon Period for an incoming Government, especially after such an emphatic victory. However while neither of the Major Parties would talk about it during the Election Campaign, the Bush Wars in Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan represent the greatest moral challenge to Australia for decent, anti-racist humanitarians such as myself. However both “me-too” Labor and the Bush-ite Coalition adopted the policy made famous by British comedy actor John Clease as Basil Fawlty: “don’t mention the war”.
Like Kevin Rudd, I am an economic conservative and I imagine that Kevin Rudd also embraces, like me, the American Declaration of Independence assertion that “All Men are created equal and have an unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. However as the son of a Jewish refugee from Nazism and married to a Black Australian I take “All Men are created equal” very much to heart and necessarily have an attitude of zero tolerance to the racism, invasions, wars, occupations, and genocide by the Racist Bush-ites and Racist Zionists in the Middle East. However the American Alliance is the #1 Article of Faith in Australian politics and Mr Rudd is heavily politically constrained – no matter what this no doubt decent fellow may think in his heart.
Indeed his predecessor, former right-wing Labor Leader of the Opposition Mark Latham, was roundly defeated in the 2004 Federal Election when he declared that he would “bring the boys home from Iraq by Christmas” . The then US Ambassador Schieffer (“Schieffer-brains” to Latham in his post-politics “The Latham Diaries”) immediately intervened in the Australian election, Latham was doomed and the rest was history. “Me-too” Rudd trod the mine-field very carefully and has triumphed. But for those who believe that “All Men are created Equal”, Rudd’s post-election Honeymoon is over before it Began.
The UK Guardian has just reported that Rudd will pull most but not all of Australia’s troops out of Iraq by mid-2008, leaving some hundreds behind; Rudd will soon meet Robert McCallum, the US ambassador to Australia, to discuss the precise timing of the withdrawal; Rudd admits that the presence of troops in Iraq has made Australia more of a target for terrorism; and he will keep Australia’s 1,000 troops in Afghanistan.
Of course it is notable that the new Australian PM Rudd is going to consult with the American Ambassador to Australia McCallum rather than with the Puppet Iraqi Government or the Iraqi People (of whom over 90% want the Occupiers to go according to recent polls). So much for Australia’s ostensible desire for "Iraqi democracy". Rudd has unwittingly exposed the reality of Occupied Iraq as a US colony under the war criminal Bush Administration.
As an antiracist, humanitarian Australian I don't like our new government being tarnished with continued complicity in the continued criminal occupation of Iraq, evidently for another 3 years.
Check with UNICEF and you will discover that 122,000 under-5 year old Iraqi infants die each year, 90% avoidably and due to US Coalition war crimes in gross violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War ):
The US Coalition – including Australia under the Bush-ite Coalition and now under Rudd Labor - grossly violates this Geneva Convention as revealed by the following UNICEF- and WHO-derived statistics for the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories: 0.5 million post-invasion under-5 infant deaths - 90% avoidable and largely due to gross US Coalition violation of the Geneva Convention that unequivocally demands that the Occupying Power does everything “to the fullest extent of the means available to it” to keep its conquered subjects alive (see Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War presented above ); the “total annual per capita medical expenditure” permitted in Occupied Iraq by the US Coalition is $135 (2004) as compared to $19 (Occupied Afghanistan) $2,560 (UK), $3,123 (Australia) and $6,096 (the US ).
This is what Rudd has evidently committed to before he is even sworn in as PM on Monday 3 December 2007: 3 x 122,000 x 0.9 = 329,400 = 0.3 million under-5 year old Subject Iraqi infants will die avoidably in the 3 years of the Rudd Government and the continued presence of Australian soldiers (albeit in a different roles to their current roles but present in accordance with US wishes and NOT the wishes of the Subjugated Iraqi People).
Most Australians don't like child-killing, mass murder and war and are overwhelmingly opposed to the Bush Iraq War. We certainly didn't vote for the continuing complicity of Australia in the passive mass murder of Iraqi kids at the rate of 0.1 million every year – an outrage that continues because of the racist lying by omission of Mainstream media and politicians. The ONLY Mainstream publication reporting this carnage (to my knowledge) during the Australian election campaign was a book “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” edited by Australia’s top science journalist Robyn Williams and published by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (the ABC) – it contained a chapter (just prior to chapters by top human rights lawyers Kep Enderby QC and Julian Burnside QC) by ME, entitled “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality”, this being the transcript of a nation-wide broadcast I had made in 2005 ).
Yet Mainstream Australian journalists and politicians IGNORE the carnage in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories – post-invasion excess deaths total 0.3 million, 1.5-2 million and 3-6 million, respectively; under-5 infant deaths total 0.2 million, 0.6 million and 2.2 million, respectively; and the refugees total 7 million, 4.5 million and 3.7 million, respectively (see ”State Terrorism” on MWC News ).
Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention states: “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
The "intent", whether of a serial killer or of a Nazi-style aggressor nation in relation to the UN definition of Genocide is established from (a) confession of intent or (b) in the typical absence of a confession, "sustained" conduct of the killing (and of other abuses listed by the UN Genocide Convention).
The UK has been killing Iraqis on and off since 1914; the US has been directly killing Iraqis since 1990 - 1990-2007 Iraqi excess deaths from Sanctions, Gulf War and Occupation total 3.9 million; under-5 infant deaths total 1.8 million; and refugees now total 4.5 million (2005 population: 27 million) (see "Iraq: Genocide by all definition. Bush's Iraq war & 2 million excess deaths". Australia has been involved in this carnage on and off for 90 years as a loyal member of the violent and racist British and American Empires.
“Me-too” Rudd has announced – even before he is formally appointed as PM – that he will continue Australia’s involvement in what Dr Mark Weisbrot (JustForeignPolicy.org) calls an “Iraqi Holocaust” and what outstanding US conservative humanitarian Dr Paul Craig Roberts and outstanding British-Australian journalist John Pilger call the “Iraqi Genocide”.
Racist White Australia under ostensibly well-intentioned and humane “Me-too” Rudd (aka Religious Right Rudd, R3 – see the cartoon) is now committed to continued holocaust commission, genocide commission, holocaust denial and genocide denial in realtionto the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories even before the new Russ Labor Government is sworn in.
For anti-racist, humanitarian, “All Men are created equal” people such as myself, the Rudd Labor Government Honeymoon is over, even before it began.