Iraq
Britain and the US seem to be having some communication problems about who will have veto rights over US military attacks on innocent wedding parties, while the US's former pin-up boy, Ahmad Chalabi, claims that his recent fall from grace is just a grand conspiracy. If it wasn't so serious, it would be laughable! The joint US/British resolution before the UN Security Council says that sovereignty will be handed to Iraqis after June 30, however 130,000 US troops and 8000 British troops will remain in the country under the control of the US military. When will the honeymoon be over?
Bush continues to claim that the resistance in Iraq is made up solely of terrorists who are intent on crushing democracy and killing innocent people. His false bravado with respect to Iraq is increasingly underlined by his nervousness when the subject is raised. He knows that a widespread but disparate movement has now formed in Iraq in opposition to his forces. This resistance lacks the discipline and technology of US forces, but as in Vietnam, we can see the genesis of a movement that will fight to the death for its birthright — the right to determine Iraq's future without foreign domination.
The debate in the UN Security Council with respect to Iraq is a charade. There can be no resolution of the Iraqi question without the complete withdrawal of US forces from that country. Moqtada al Sadr is right. For all the chaos that might occur, the Iraqi people must be left to thrash out their own future. The US and its allies have got to stop patronising Iraqis and let them get on with establishing their own nation. Trying to dictate Iraq's future will only lead the US into an ever greater quagmire, and one that will increasingly spill over into their homeland.
Adam Bonner
Meroo Meadow, NSW
Timor
The Howard government can play with $37 billion in an election budget, but at the same time has cut its modest aid to East Timor.
I was in Dili recently and our group visited a family who told us they were hungry. Even so, they brought out some corn and some boiled bananas to share with us. They rarely eat meat, saying that they would have a chicken on "happy Christmas". In East Timor, this family's situation is normal. However, they want justice not charity.
East Timor is requesting that the dispute over its sea border with Australia be settled by using the internationally accepted standard of the median line, that is, halfway. Such a border would ensure East Timor a consistent income, about $US12 billion over 20 years, which would enable the nation to feed and employ its citizens without going into debt.
Since 1999, Australia has taken resources worth a million dollars a day from areas of the Timor Sea whose ownership is under dispute, a total of $2 billion, a sum which dwarfs any aid we've given to Timor. Australia is also claiming at least 60% of the resources which lie on East Timor's side of a median line, and has withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the Tribunal for the Law of the Sea so that there won't be an umpire to interfere.
Can you imagine the outcry if the Timorese were claiming resources on our side of a halfway line?
Sister Susan Connelly
St Marys, NSW
Ecological stupidity
So our Pinnochio-like federal government wants to sell some $5 billion worth of gas to the US, the world's largest and most unrepentant atmospheric polluter.
This follows at least one tranche of $25 billion worth of gas to China, the continuing export of gas to Japan and the proposed export of gas that legally belongs to East Timor.
Coincident with this is the ongoing attack on the welfare pittance allocated to, in this case, Aboriginal people. These policies, and the Northern Territory's outstation policy, are ecologically stupid.
It is an unavoidable fact that one of the consequences of increasing the external energy input to an ecosystem is an increase in population.
There is a total political blindness to this consequence, perpetuated by the media, which lauds the export industries regardless of their long-term environmental effects. And by politicians who think it is heroic to ship all our finite resources overseas. For instance the production of cotton, the development of which was aided and abetted by that illustrious territory politician Bob Collins, is destroying the Murray-Darling river system, not to mention the corruption of politicians, officials and governments. Objections are met with the claim that we need cotton for our clothes, when the truth is that almost all our cotton crop is exported. Look at the labels in your cotton clothes.
Col Friel
Alawa, NT
Hicks & Habib 1
The torture of Hicks and Habib is for John Howard. If they reveal something, then Howard is vindicated. But, sleep well, John, their screams won't carry across the green-reflecting harbour water to Kirribilli House.
Denis Kevans
Wentworth Falls, NSW
Hicks & Habib 2
The US government has repeatedly stated that the US Congress has no legal jurisdiction over its (America's) concentration torture camp based at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
This, they claim, is the reason Australian citizens Hicks and Habib cannot have their detention challenged in US courts. With all the forms of torture they have developed, even after two years they have been unable to come up with anything to charge Hicks with. The Australian foreign minister is on record as saying Australia has also been unable to find anything to charge him with.
Downer has stated, in front of witnesses, that the Howard government hopes the US will be able to come up with something to charge Hicks with, as if he were released and returned to Australia he would have to be set free!
If the US has no legal jurisdiction at Guantanamo Bay then surely as landlord-owner Cuba has? Why cannot the Cuban government demand all the illegally held prisoners at Guantanamo Bay be brought to trial in Cuba's courts and if no charges can be proved by the US the prisoners be released and returned to their homelands?
Someone has legal jurisdiction over this leased property and it is to these courts we must turn.
Robert McCormick
Bridgewater, SA
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, June 9, 2004.
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