Vietnam War

The Vietnam War led by the US spanned most of the 1960s through to 1975. The famous motto “All the way with LBJ” developed as a result of Australian PM Harold Holt’s commitment to military support of the US led War in collaboration with Lyndon Baines Johnson, the US President.

The conventional political wisdom at the time was that the North Vietnamese “Commos” were simply part of a larger Communist “Empire” led by Mao Tse Tung; the Chinese Communist revolutionary and founding father of the People's Republic of China, which he governed as Chairman of the Communist Party of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976.

The War was controversial and based partly on something called the “Domino Theory”, which meant that Australia was exposed to the threat of invasion by the Communist Chinese. Once the Commos took South Vietnam we were done for.

Today Australia faces the irony of an “invasion” by the Capitalist Chinese. Their money is invading Australia.

They are buying houses and farms in order to exploit opportunities for profit, including removal of food from Australia. We have empty houses throughout the suburbs of capital cities that may have been purchased to diversify some foreigner's asset portfolio.

Australia’s politicians, supported by the ABC, provide the Australian people with no reasonable option by way of public policy debate. The ABC just reports what is happening instead of challenging the logic.

It’s all about the wealthiest lobbying for “growth”. People like Paul Keating were praised for “deregulating” the Australian economy in the early 90s and cutting down tariff barriers. The Liberals fully supported these theories.

In 2000, with the Australian Dollar at around 50 US cents, the import duty on foreign cars was around 5%. By 2008 the Australian dollar had risen to around 95 US cents. Similar rises had also occurred against all major currencies. In order to maintain the competitiveness of the Australian car industry at a level comparable to year 2000, the tariff would have needed to rise to 78%, because US Dollar priced cars had become so much more competitive.

This was free trade (?) combined with a rigid tariff structure that ignored the integral part that the exchange rate played in defining competitiveness. What drove the Australian dollar so high? Surely this was a combination of factors driven by Government policies including:

• Extreme population growth driven by mass migration
• The population policy driving demand for everything, including housing
• The population policy creating a dilemma for the Reserve Bank’s interest rate policy. There is a conflict between the need to use high interest rates to resist house price inflation and the need to reduce Australia’s exchange rate using low interest rates. The Government and Reserve Bank have failed miserably in achieving a coherent outcome. Some of the blame must surely be attributable to the extreme population growth policy
• The FIRB’s failure to manage the impact of foreign investment on the long term "interests" of the Australian people by supporting foreign investment in all its forms
• The delusionary thinking that convinces both economists and politicians that GDP growth must be driven by population growth despite all the KPI’s that suggest that this may not be true. These include adverse trends in unemployment, homelessness, productivity, infrastructure funding, Federal budget growth, GDP growth per capita, and environmental impact. In fact there is arguably not a single KPI that clearly supports extreme population growth

So what is driving extreme population growth? It’s really quite simple. Politicians are addicted to dumb GDP growth and fail to perform the due diligence analysis of the facts that might lead to a better understanding of the extreme population growth problem in Australia.

The ABC fully supports this failure by claiming the issue is “not newsworthy”.

Big business loves it because it drives short term profits. No other criterion is substantially or actively used to drive the decision-making of big business.

If the Government can neither evaluate nor comprehend what is in the national interest; what hope is there for Australia's future?

(This article has been created from a comment posted on candobetter because it contains important industrial relations news.) Update, 09:33AM, 18 Aug 2013: Irish MP Clare Daly has tweeted "Well done to Bob Carnegie & the CFMEU for their historic victory for trade unionists in Australia, ..."

The ABC reported at 1.20PM today, followed by Brisbane's Courier Mail and The Australian that "Contempt of Court" charges against Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) organiser Bob Carnegie were dismissed by Federal Court Magistrate in Brisbane.

For more information, see "Fellow workers, comrades – case dismissed. WE WON!" of 16 Aug 2013 on Bob Carnegie Defence Campaign at https://bobcarnegiedefence.wordpress.com/.

The charges arose as a result of Bob Carnegie attempting to enforce a picket line at the Children's Hospital then under construction in Brisbane against an attempt by the anti-union employer AbiGroup to deny union rights to workers working there.

This is a monumental win for Australian trade unions, whose rights have been eroded since former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser criminalised much trade union activity with his Sections 45D and 45E of the Trade Practises Act. Under the legislation, it became a criminal offence for workers to take industrial action against an employer other than their own. So, action by workers in one workplace in solidarity with another work place was forbidden.

Former PM Malcolm Fraser, whose Sections 45D and 45E of the Trade Practices Act criminalised industrial action by workers in support of other workers

Incidentally, Malcolm Fraser, in recent years, has made great efforts to have himself depicted in the media as a "bleeding heart" friend of refugees,_1 2.

Vietnamese refugees were also used to undermine trade union militancy, particularly in the Melboune Postal exchange, where many were employed.

The 'Labor' Governments of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, which ruled Australia from 1983 until 1996 and began the transformation of Australia into a neoliberal "free market" economy, chose not to repeal these laws. As a result, Liberal Prime Minister John Howard attempted to break the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) in 1998 having little fear that other unions would give effective industrial support to the MUA.

Fortunately, a determined campaign by the Australian community, including the families of seafarers and wharfies, defeated Howard's attempt to break the union. It was also helped by a the New Zealand Seafarers' Union refusing to work on on a ship which had been loaded by scab labour.

Sadly, as recorded in The Latham Diaries (2005) collaboration by unconscionable Labor politicians, including the current Australian foreign Minister Bob Carr, enabled John Howard to rort his way back into office in 1998, 2001 an 2004.

Following his 2004 election, John Howard made another attempt to break the trade unions when he introduced his "Work Choices" legislation, for which he had obtained no electoral mandate, into Federal Parliament. He then spent $124 million of taxpayers' money on propaganda campaign to promote "Work Choices". ₃

Fortunately, the "Your rights at work" campaign of the trade union movement made it difficult fro ruthless employers to take advantage of these laws and helped to swing public opinion so decisively against John Howard that he not only lost government in the 2007 elections, but also lost his own seat of Wentworth to Labor Party candidate Maxine McKew

Update, 16 August: "case dismissed," but fight not entirely over

"Fellow workers, comrades – case dismissed. WE WON!" of 16 Aug 2013 :

...

The fight isn’t entirely over, as Bob still faces a civil case brought against him by Abigroup, but today’s news is a huge victory.

We’ll post more news and reaction later, but for now, a huge thank you to all our supporters across the world who’ve helped keep up the pressure and maintain the profile of the campaign.

Footenote[s]

1 ↑ As an example, see Malcolm Fraser on Coalition asylum plans: no limits to the inhumanity in the Guardian of 16 Aug 2013.

2 ↑ One example is refugees from Vietnam. Prior to 1975, these Vietnamese refugees had sided with occupying Australian and American military forces in the war against their own people (and, before that, the French colonists and Japanese occupiers). During the war, much of the country was destroyed as bombs with the explosive capacity equivalent to 640 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs were dropped on Vietnam (in addition what was dropped on neighbouring Laos and Cambodia) and much of the Vietnamese jungle was destroyed with "Agent Orange" defoliant sprayed from above. Nick Turse, author of Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (1913) estimates that 2.3 million Vietnamese civilians died in the war and 5.3 million were wounded.

After the 'South' Vietnamese American puppet regime of was defeated in 1975, many of those who had supported it fled to Australia as refugees. Here they were welcomed with open arms by the then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser. As Minister for the Army after 1966 and as Minister for Defence from 1969 until 1971, he had conscripted Australians into the Army and sent them to fight in defence of the South Vietnamese dictatorship. After the refugees arrived, they formed an electoral bloc of support for Malcolm Fraser. With their help, he was able to stay in office until 1983.

3 ↑ This is described in Mark Latham's political gift to John Howard of 20 Nov 2007 by James Sinnamon. Sadly, Latham acted no better in 2007 than those of which he was rightly critical in The Latham Diaries. He actually opposed the trade union movement's "Your Rights at Work" campaign against "Work Choices" and called on Australians to vote for John Howard.

Miko Peled, whose father Mattitya Peled served as a General in the Israeli Army, speaks at a forum in Seattle, in the United States on 9 Oct 2012.

The talk includes a comprehensive explanation of how the Palestinians were progressively expelled from more and more of their homeland since 1947. Myths that depict Israel as merely defending itself from the aggression of Palestinians and neighbouring Arab nations in the wars of 1947 and 1967 are demolished. (The talk is embedded in this article. It can be found on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etXAm-OylQQ .

See also: Kennedy, the Lobby and the Bomb ₁ of 2 May 2013 by Laurent Guyénot on Voltaire Net.

See also: mikopeled.com

Editorial comment: The humanity and moral courage of both Miko Peled and his late father Mattiya Peled (pictured, right) can be seen from this broadcast of one hour and eight minutes. Also the knowledge, insight and judgment of Miko Peled are very helpful.

However, I dispute Mattiya's analysis in the following points, which, although not directly related to the question of Israel and Palestine, are nonetheless major issues in their own right:

1. He considers the issue of Iran as a 'distraction' to the critical issue of justice for Palestine.

2. Just before the end of the talk, he implies that the anti-Vietnam-War protest movement successfully stopped the Vietnam War.

Iran

The article of 17 May 2013 on Global Research, June 6-9: Bilderberg Meeting behind Closed Doors. On the Agenda: Domestic Spying, Diffusing Social Protests, War on Syria and Iran cites InfoWars:

Infowars said its "inside source" listed the following June issues for discussion:

• destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities within three years;
• prolonging war on Syria by arming anti-Assad elements;

Whilst Palestine remains a critical issue, it has, on a number of occasions in recent months been given focus by the mainstream media in obvious attempts to momentarily divert attention away from its losing campaign of lies in support of the Western imperialists' proxy terrorist war against Syria. This war is aimed ultimately at Iran, Russia and China. So Iran cannot rightly be considered a 'diversion'.

Vietnam war

The Vietnam War was not stopped until after horrific devastation was inflicted upon the whole of the Indo-China peninsula by US and allied bombers, warships and ground forces. The real fight to end the war was fought by President John F. Kennedy, murdered in 1963 and his younger brother Bobby Kennedy, who was murdered in 1968 and by Jim Garrison who fought legal battles in New Orleans to unmask the murderers of JFK. Had JFK or his brother lived or had Garrison succeeded, the war would almost certainly have ended by 1969 at the latest.

In reality, the leaders of the anti-Vietnam-War protest movement, failed to support Garrison's investigation into the murder of JFK. Had they done so, Garrison almost certainly would have succeeded. With JFK's killers unmasked, Bobby Kennedy would almost certainly have lived to become US President and been able to end the war by no later than January 1969. Instead, Bobby Kennedy was also murdered and President Nixon, who was elected in his place, continued the ground war and aerial bombardment of Vietnam until 1973. The fighting against the US puppet government of South Vietnam persisted until 1975.

After Vietnam's formal victory in 1975, its economic ruin from the war caused it to be subsequently enslaved to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This has taken away from the Vietnamese people much of what little they were able to gain in 1975.

Footnotes

1. ↑ This article on VoltaireNet is exceptionally helpful and informative. It covers events of the mid-1960's in the Middle East which followed the 1963 murder of JFK. The bombing of the USS Liberty by the Israeli Air Force during the Six Day War of 1967 was raised by a member of Miko Peled's audience in the broadcast embedded above.

On 8 June 1967, the fourth day of the Six Day War, the USS Liberty surveillance vessel was bombed and survivors machine gunned. Only the presence of Soviet Air Force fighters, who witnessed the attack, prevented all the survivors from being killed and the sinking of the USS Liberty then being blamed upon Egypt. This attack was also covered up by President Johnson, who intended to use the false flag sinking of the USS Liberty as a pretext to join Israel's war against Egypt and overthrow the government of Gamal Abdel Nasser.

This also reveals why the Israeli Intelligence agency Mossad almost certainly had a hand in the murder of JFK. As an outspoken supporter of Arab nationalism, particularly the struggle of the Algerian FLN against the French colonialists, from when he was elected to the US Senate in 1952, John F. Kennedy understood the insidious role played by Israel in the Middle East and in thr United States itself.

This article shows it most implausible that JFK was the imperialist war-maker that the likes of Noam Chomsky and the phoney left have attempted to depict him as.

The Federal Parliament of Australia, a country which, in the 1960's participated in the devastating war against Vietnam and in the illegal wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003 and which is now participating in the ongoing war against Afghanistan, yesterday passed legislation to undermine international laws to eradicate cluster bombs. The Governing Labor Party and the Opposition Liberal/National Coalition united to support the bill. This was a betrayal of Australian international obligations, Australian Greens spokesperson Assisting on Defence Senator Scott Ludlam said yesterday after the Government's cluster munitions bill passed the Senate.

This article has been adapted from a media release by Greens Senator Scott Ludlam. See also: Australia poised to pass dubious law to implement cluster bomb ban in stopclustermunitions.org, Australian responsibility: cluster bomb carnage in Iraq of 3 March 2011 by Chris Doran in Online Opinion, Senate considers new cluster bomb laws in the SMH of 20 August 2012, Senate passes ban on cluster munitions (a misleading title) in The Australian of 21 August 2012.

This article has been adapted from a media release by Greens Senator Scott Ludlam.See also: Australia poised to pass dubious law to implement cluster bomb ban in stopclustermunitions.org, Australian responsibility: cluster bomb carnage in Iraq of 3 March 2011 by Chris Doran in Online Opinion, Senate considers new cluster bomb laws in the SMH of 20 August 2012, Senate passes ban on cluster munitions (a misleading title) in The Australian of 21 August 2012.

The Federal Parliament of Australia, a country which, in the 1960's participated in the devastating war against Vietnam and in the illegal wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003 and which is now participating in the ongoing war against Afghanistan, yesterday passed legislation to undermine international laws to eradicate cluster bombs.

The Governing Labor Party and the Opposition Liberal/National Coalition united to support the bill. This was a betrayal of Australian international obligations, Australian Greens spokesperson Assisting on Defence Senator Scott Ludlam said yesterday after the Government's cluster munitions bill passed the Senate.

Survivor Soraj Ghulam Habib outside the Australian
Senate in Canberra last year. Photo credit: CMC

Greens spokesperson assisting on Defence Senator Scott Ludlam said the bill "ignores the urgent pleadings of the medical and humanitarian communities and completely fails to meet our obligations under the international Convention outlawing cluster bombs".

"Sub-munitions from cluster bombs that do not explode on impact remain a threat for decades - 98% of the victims of these are civilians. These monstrous weapons have no legitimate role to play under any circumstances.

Vietnamese cluster bomb victims
Nguyen Thi Cuc	Li Van Thang Ho Van Ly

"This law allows Australian forces to store, transport, and assist in the use of cluster bombs. Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic said this law could 'allow Australian military personnel to load and aim the gun, so long as they did not pull the trigger'. It also fails to outlaw indirect investment in companies producing cluster munitions.

"The Government advised me in the Senate last night that storing and transporting cluster munitions for other countries is not their policy. If it's not their policy, why is it allowed by the legislation? Why not close the loophole?"

Senator Ludlam tabled leaked diplomatic cables - published by WikiLeaks and used in Fairfax media reports in May 2011 - showing the Government, at the behest of the United States, lobbied to undermine the Convention to allow the very same flaws now entrenched in Australian domestic law.

"Despite the denials, leaks revealed that the Government lobbied countries to water-down the Convention on eradicating cluster munitions. That shameful misadventure failed, and as a result our country is a signatory to an unequivocal agreement aimed at eliminating cluster munitions from the face of the Earth: There is no grey area and there are no excuses - yet tonight the Government and the Opposition have shown no backbone and no honour."

Media Contact: Giovanni Torre - 0417 174 302

Title was: "We all have a stake in Hollywood telling the truth about US wars", 14 Jan 11

Many, who believe themselves to be progressive, against war, for the environment and for international peace, display an unreasonable prejudice against almost all things American, in particular the American film industry. That prejudice, in fact, makes the struggle for peace and justice harder, even if it can justifiably be said that by far the greatest of threats to world peace come from within the United States of America.

Why?

As great as the terrible harm that America has inflicted upon the world since at least the end of the Second World War -- the Vietnam War, the Korean War, the recent and ongoing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen etc., covert interference to overthrow governments, including popular, democratically elected governments, who were seen as a threat to vested American interests by the CIA -- the harm inflicted upon the world is nowhere near as great as it could have been had the US Military industrial complex been given a free hand to do as it wished.

So, what stops the military industrial complex doing as it pleases?

What stops them is vast numbers of decent Americans of good will, who are prepared to stand up against evil, even at the risk of their own lives. In fact many have given their lives. More well known figures who have died to prevent war include: President John F Kennedy in 1963, his brother Senator Robert Kennedy in 1968, Martin Luther King in 1968 and Malcolm X in 1964.

From 1961 until 1963, when he was murdered, President John F Kennedy stopped the US military not once, but three times, from launching a nuclear war. As has been written elsewhere, humankind's debt to the late JFK is vast and unrepayable.

In the 1980's President Reagan planned to launch a pre-emptive nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union. We know this, because of the testimony of retired Lieutenant Colonel Robert (Bob) Bowman, Robert Bowman gave 6,000 speeches against Reagan's plans for nuclear mass murder succeeded in stopping Reagan. The debt of gratitude owed by the US public and the world to Robert Bowman, who is still using his voice to speak out against war, is comparable to that owed to JFK.

What makes it possible for such people to have prevailed to the extent they have so far, is public opinion. The fight to win US public opinion is a fight in which all of us, whether we live in the US or not, have a vital stake.

A most important part of the fight for US public opinion occurs in Hollywood. Much of what comes out of Hollywood serves to reinforce the lies used to justify past and present US behaviour on the world scene. The Vietnam war is a case in point with many movies and television series portraying the American military intervention as one of good intentions by the United States and its soldiers towards the people of Vietnam.

On occasions, films which, instead, tell the truth about the Vietnam War are produced in Hollywood.

One such film was Brian de Palma's "Casualties of War" made in 1989. It starred Michael J Fox and Sean Penn. Penn has more recently starred with Naomi Watts in Game [1] of 2010 which told the truth about the US government's Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Big Lie used as the justification to invade Iraq in 2003. (site previoulsy linked to at )

"Casualties of War" was of an incident which occurred during the Vietnam War in 1966 in which four US soldiers abducted, raped and then murdered a Vietnamese women. A fifth soldier, Private First Class (PFC) Eriksson, played by Michael Fox, refused to participate in the rape, and tried to talk the others out of committing rape. He was not able to stop the rape, but did try, unsuccessfully, to free the woman and save her life afterwards.

Afterwards, he reported the incident to his commanding officer. After his commanding officer refused to prosecute, he took his complaint higher and higher until, eventually the Army was left with no choice but to conduct the trial. All four, who participated in the rape were found guilty and sentenced to hard labour prison terms.

The courage of Eriksson is hard to exaggerate. By refusing to participate in the rape and by subsequently attempting to have the rapists charged, he put his own life at risk. His narrow escape from a grenade explosion in the toilet block before the trial showed the peril he faced to be very real.

That peril would have remained after the rapists had served their sentences and were released.

The production of "Casualties of War" can only make Eriksson's murder less likely and will make it more likely that others, placed in the circumstances similar to those in which PFC Eriksson found himself, stand up for what is right, rather than allow themselves to participate in crimes.

It is difficult to exaggerate the good done by those who produce such films as "Casualties of War" and "Fair Game".

Footnotes

[1] Site previously linked to at http://www.fairgame-movie.com/ no longer exists. - Ed, 5 Mar 2012