Antony Loewenstein

Years after this scandal exploded, we’re still receiving details on US allies being far too willing to excuse and defend abuses:

Secret Defence documents obtained under freedom of information laws show an Australian officer, Major George O’Kane, was far more deeply involved in the operations of Abu Ghraib prison when terrible abuses of prisoners occurred than previously revealed.

The documents, which include extensive interviews with Major O’Kane when he returned from Iraq in 2004, reveal that as a military lawyer embedded with the United States he was a primary author of the manual for processing prisoners in Iraq.

He also advised on the legality of interrogation techniques being used on at least one detainee. Major O’Kane was instructed to deny access to the Red Cross to nine ”High Value Detainees” during their January 2004 visit because the prisoners were undergoing active interrogation and, according to the US view, fell under the exemption of ”imperative military necessity”. This view was contentious.

After his return he told superiors he was aware of rumours that the US had ordered an internal investigation of Abu Ghraib and it had something to do with photos, though his knowledge does not appear to have extended beyond a conversation with a US officer who assured him it was being investigated.

Although Major O’Kane’s role was discussed at a Senate inquiry in May 2004, he was not permitted to give evidence because he was said to be too junior.

He also did not attend US congressional hearings into the abuse, despite the documents revealing that the Democrat leader, Nancy Pelosi, personally asked the then prime minister, John Howard, to allow him to attend.

…

As point man for the Red Cross during visits to Abu Ghraib, Major O’Kane saw highly critical Red Cross working papers alleging abuses at Abu Ghraib and drafted responses for the prison chief, Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski.

Major O’Kane was also aware that the US was hiding a high-level detainee – dubbed ”Triple XXX” in the US media – from the Red Cross. This had been done at the direction of the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.

Even more sensitive was Major O’Kane’s involvement in a highly secret mission referred to in the documents as ”Operation Eel”.

This involved the transfer of a high-value detainee from the US warship USS Higgins, anchored in the Persian Gulf, back to Abu Ghraib on December 16, 2003. The timing is significant because it was near the time of the capture of Saddam Hussein. This week Defence denied Major O’Kane was involved in the transfer of Saddam. But the documents and other sources suggest the detainee might have been someone who helped pinpoint Saddam’s last hideout.

”Major O’Kane did not observe any abuse of the suspect who was manacled and hooded during the transport operation,” the Australian Eyes Only report says.

In December 2003 and January 2004, Major O’Kane was involved in negotiations with the Red Cross for access to Saddam.

According to new evidence, clearly deeply. Of course, we’ve seen countless examples in the US of senior government officials escaping any kind of punishment; it’s all about targeting individuals low down the food chain. When a so-called democracy refuses to take responsibility for illegal actions in war, little stops future leaders doing exactly the same thing. Besides, there are masses of evidence of occupation forces serially abusing prisoners in the “war on terror”:

Australia went to war in Afghanistan without a clear policy on how to deal with enemy detainees, secret papers reveal.

When a policy was adopted, the then chief of the Defence Force, Admiral Chris Barrie, expressed reservations about the legality of the agreed approach.

The documents also show another former Defence Force chief, General Peter Cosgrove, informed the Howard government of the death of an Iranian man captured by Australian troops in 2003, but the Australian public was never told.

The papers, obtained under freedom of information laws by the Public Interest Advocacy Centre and made available to the ABC, reveal utter confusion at the highest levels of the Howard government and the Department of Defence over how to deal with enemy detainees.

On February 25, 2002, as Australian troops fought in Afghanistan, Admiral Barrie wrote to then defence minister Robert Hill complaining his commanders were being put at risk.

“There is currently no clear government policy on the handling of personnel who may be captured by the ADF … Defence and in particular ADF commanders are currently accepting the risk flowing from the lack of government policy,” he wrote.

Admiral Barrie proposed a set of interim arrangements, such as asking for American help to move captives from where the Australians were in Kandahar to a US detention facility, where an ADF team could supervise any prisoners captured by Australians.

Robert Hill gave permission for Admiral Barrie to negotiate with the United States and added a series of handwritten comments at the end of Admiral Barrie’s missive.

“I don’t understand why I didn’t get this brief before the Afghanistan operation,” he wrote. “We clearly should have sorted out this issue with the US as leader of the coalition months ago.”

What emerged from the negotiations became Australia’s detention policy in Afghanistan and Iraq: that if even a single American soldier was present when Australian forces captured enemy fighters, the US and not Australia would be recognised as the “detaining power”.

In a paragraph with words redacted, Admiral Barrie expressed reservations about the legality of this approach.

“Such an arrangement may not fully satisfy Australia’s legal obligations and in any event will not be viewed as promoting a respect for the rule of law,” he concluded.

Is there truly anybody who still believes Wikileaks is not releasing essential information to better understand our world?

The revelations just keep on coming and indicate a government in Canberra that is more than willing to play the post-colonial game. From simply fighting with the big boys in Afghanistan to creating trouble themselves closer to home:

Leaked diplomatic cables sent from the US embassy in Lisbon, Portugal in June 2006 have revealed that a leading Portuguese intelligence official told American diplomatic officials that the Australian government had repeatedly “fomented unrest” in East Timor, in order to advance its “geopolitical and commercial interests.” The extraordinary exchange occurred two weeks after Canberra had dispatched a military intervention force to the oil and gas rich state, as part of its “regime change” campaign against Timorese Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri.

The Australian government, then led by John Howard, targeted Alkatiri because of his perceived alignment with rival powers, especially Portugal, Timor’s former colonial ruler, and China. The Fretilin party leader was also despised by Canberra for his extraction of unwelcome concessions during negotiations over the division of the Timor Sea’s energy resources.

In February and March 2006, about 600 Timorese soldiers, known as the “petitioners”, mutinied. President Xanana Gusmao then issued a provocative speech on March 23 in which he denounced the Alkatiri government as corrupt and dictatorial. In April, various criminal and ex-Indonesian militia elements joined the petitioners and staged a series of violent attacks on soldiers and security forces who remained loyal to the state. The Australian government seized on the unrest to demand Alkatiri’s removal.

An Australian occupation force, comprising 1,300 troops and police backed by armoured vehicles and attack helicopters, was ordered into Timor on May 24. At the same time, the Australian media went into a frenzy, demanding Alkatiri’s resignation. The ABC’s “Four Corners” broadcast a lurid report featuring bogus accusations that the prime minister had formed a “hit squad” to assassinate Fretilin’s opponents. On June 26, Alkatiri capitulated, handing power to Canberra’s favoured candidate, Jose Ramos-Horta.

Concurrently with these developments, the World Socialist Web Site characterised what had happened as an Australian-inspired political coup. The WSWS concluded that there was no doubt that Australian military and intelligence operatives in Dili had advance knowledge of, and likely encouraged, the petitioners’ mutiny and violent protests. (See: “How Australia orchestrated ‘regime change’ in East Timor”)

The WikiLeaks-released diplomatic cables from the US embassy in Lisbon, published in the Portuguese weekly newspaper Expresso, have provided important new evidence confirming this analysis.

The key cable was sent by the US ambassador to Portugal, Al Hoffman, on June 12, 2006, i.e. 19 days after Australian troops were sent into Timor and 14 days before Alkatiri resigned. Headed, “Portugal: An Intel View of East Timor”, the cable reports on a discussion between a US embassy official (identified only as “Pol/Econ DepCouns”) and Jorge Carvalho, chief of staff of Portugal’s Intelligence Services (SIRP). The cable—which noted that Carvalho is Portugal’s equivalent to the US Director of National Intelligence—was marked “priority” and was widely circulated. Copies were sent to the US embassies in East Timor, Australia, New Zealand, and Malaysia; in Washington, to the Secretary of State, Defence Secretary, National Security Council, and Central Intelligence Agency; and to the US military’s Pacific Command and Joint Intelligence Centre in Hawaii.

The cable read: “Carvalho commented that Australia had not played a productive role in East Timor, underscoring that Australia’s motives were driven by geopolitical and commercial (e.g. oil) interests while Portugal’s main interest was to maintain stability.”

The analysis presented by the Portuguese intelligence chief was clearly self-serving—Lisbon was and is just as preoccupied as Canberra with geostrategic and commercial concerns in East Timor. Carvalho’s remarks underscore the long-standing and bitter rivalry between Australia and Portugal over who would play the dominant role in so-called “independent” East Timor. However, his frank exchange with the US embassy official also demonstrates that the real motivations of Australia’s military intervention in 2006 were clearly understood by those in power internationally. The Howard government’s claims of a “humanitarian” operation aimed at providing security for the Timorese people were purely for domestic consumption in Australia.

I’m sure the great former Australian leader will talk to the Zionist state about the best ways to kill Arabs under occupation:

Former prime minister John Howard will visit Israel as a guest of the Israeli government.

The trip is being treated as a state visit and will include a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The unusual honour for a former head of government reflects Mr Howard’s reputation as an ”unapologetic friend of Israel” – his own description while prime minister.

It contrasts with the snubbing of former US president Jimmy Carter and former Irish president Mary Robinson, both vocal critics, on repeated private visits.

Mr Howard said yesterday he would be travelling as a guest of the government to meet senior people, including Mr Netanyahu. He had previously visited in 2000 as prime minister, with two earlier trips in 1964, and 1988 as opposition leader.

Last night’s large event in Sydney to support the right of Wikileaks to publish material was a huge success. Thousands turned up to hear speakers chastise the Australian government for shamefully bowing down to America’s wishes over Julian Assange.

Wikileaks enjoys majority community support:

A high-profile human rights lawyer claims Julian Assange’s only crime is embarrassing the US government and if America doesn’t want to be embarrassed it should “stop doing embarrassing things”.

Supporters of the WikiLeaks founder packed Sydney’s Town Hall last night to hear Julian Burnside QC and others denounce the treatment of the whistleblower website and the Australian-born Assange at the hands of the Australian and US governments.

A panel which included journalist John Pilger and federal MP Andrew Wilkie, a former intelligence analyst and Iraq war whistleblower, said the saga has followed a narrative similar to that of former Guantanamo detainee David Hicks.

“Like Julian Assange, he’s a courageous Australian citizen who was denied the help of his government,” Pilger said of Hicks, who attended the event.

Wilkie expanded on the theme, comparing Assange to Mamdouh Habib, another ex-Guantanamo inmate, and Allan Kessing, who blew the whistle about inadequate security practices at Sydney Airport.

Wilkie described the heavy price he said he paid for challenging the Howard government over their case for war with Iraq in 2003.

“Julian Assange is going through the whistleblower grinder … and my experience is that when you stand up and try to speak the truth to power it is tough. “For my efforts you were told that I was mad,” said Wilkie, adding that whistleblowers commit suicide at a higher rate than the rest of the Australian population.

Burnside said a successful prosecution of the accused WikiLeaker Bradley Manning, a US Army private, is unlikely to have any impact on whistleblowers coming forward in the future.

“The First Amendment right of free speech in the US means that the publication would not be an offence, even though the leaking was an offence and the only exception to that … is if the leaking creates a real and present danger and there’s no suggestion of that in this case,” said Burnside, responding to a question from ninemsn.

The panelists and moderator, former SBS presenter Mary Kostakidis, were all adamant in their view that WikiLeaks has a role to play in an open and democratic society.

Perhaps, finally, Australians can realise that the former Howard government was more than happy for one of our citizens to be tortured in the name of pleasing the United States:

The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security has ordered a fresh inquiry into the case of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib.

Julia Gillard requested the new probe amid dramatic claims of Australian government complicity in his 2001 CIA rendition to Egypt, where he was detained and tortured.

The investigation follows a secret compensation payout made by the federal government to Mr Habib in December, apparently triggered by untested witness statements implicating Australian officials in his detention and brutal maltreatment in a Cairo military prison.

The new evidence, not previously made public, includes a statement from a former Egyptian military intelligence officer that he was present when Mr Habib was transferred to Cairo in November 2001.

In the statement, tendered as part of Mr Habib’s civil case against the commonwealth, the officer says Australian officials were present when Mr Habib arrived in Egypt, handcuffed, with his feet bound, naked and apparently drugged.

The statement says: “During Habib’s presence some of the Australian officials attended many times. The same official who attended the first time used to come with them.”

It continues: “Habib was tortured a lot and all the time, as the foreign intelligence wanted quick and fast information.”

The statement is at odds with repeated assertions by the federal government and security agencies since Mr Habib’s return to Australia in January 2005, that they had no knowledge of or involvement in his rendition or detention in Egypt.

As recently as November, in a letter to Mr Habib, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade insisted it had never been able to confirm Mr Habib’s presence in Egypt.

Today’s rally in Sydney was a good event, attracting around 1000 people, all of whom wanted to show solidarity with what Wikileaks stands for; transparency and real free speech.

My speech addressed the often complicity of the mainstream media in keeping government secrets away from the public. They want to be gate-keepers, close to power. I reject this; independence is vital to not be seduced by official romancing.

Here are the notes from my speech:

Wikileaks rally, Sydney Town Hall, 15 January 2011

-       Welcome to country.

-       War on whistleblowers.

-       Rudd Labor government pursued leakers more than double the rate of Howard government.

-       Obama administration also pursued whistle-blowers more than Bush years.

-       Bradley Manning, torture-like conditions in US, virtual solitary confinement, UN investigating his treatment. This is how our key ally behaves.

-       Key revelations from Wikileaks aren’t about Assange or his personal life but that our governments lie to us every day and now we have the evidence to prove it. In the Middle East, Africa, Australia, wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen.

-       Journalists reacting with anger towards Wikileaks. Jealously, frustration and outrage. Why aren’t they doing their job better?

-       Insider journalism is the enemy of an open democracy.

-       General silence of journalists in speaking out in defence of Wikileaks and what it represents, especially in the US and Australia.

-       Secrecy is the problem not leakers. Who keeps the secrets? Governments and their media courtiers.

-       In 2011, we demand greater transparency, an independent Australian government to support Wikileaks and a press that doesn’t take its cues and leaks from government advisors.

No wonder so many in positions of power fear Wikileaks. What we are seeing is diplomacy and statecraft laid bare. And the results are devastating. We are lied to on a daily basis.

And what of the countless corporate journalists taken on embedded trips to Afghanistan, simply “reporting” futile battles and tiny details that ignore the big picture? They’ve been on the drip-feed and it shows:

We squabbled with our allies, yet in public we talked of close co-operation. We frustrated the Americans with unfulfilled promises. Our politicians big-noted in public but dithered in private. Our bamboozled bureaucrats tried to make sense of the details. All along, the public was kept in the dark.

Not any longer.

Thanks to WikiLeaks, we have an insight into the diplomatic skirmishes behind the war in Afghanistan, now in its ninth year and which has cost 21 Australian lives.

Leaked US diplomatic cables expose friction between Australia and its allies, undermining the public veneer of coalition solidarity.

We did not trust the Dutch, our key partner in Afghanistan.

We confounded the Americans by dithering over Kevin Rudd’s promised ”civilian surge” – a promise made to head off a US request for more troops, by offering advisers and police instead.

Ministers and officials were left in the dark over the promise, while federal departments bickered as they struggled to make the pledge a reality.

The US State Department cables, released exclusively by WikiLeaks to The Sunday Age, include reports from the US embassy in Canberra that reveal deep distrust between Australian and Dutch forces in Oruzgan province, where Australia was part of a Netherlands-led force.

In February 2007, Australian officers, concerned the Taliban were preparing a do-or-die offensive, started planning to send special forces back to Oruzgan.

This was just five months after the Howard government pulled them out, in September 2006, when it argued Oruzgan was ”relatively stable” and that Australian reconstruction troops remaining in the province were well protected by their own forces and Dutch troops.

But the claims of stability and the stated faith in the Dutch were undermined when intelligence reports warned of a Taliban resurgence.

While the army planned another special forces deployment, officials in Canberra briefed journalists that the troops would be under Australian – not Dutch – command. But privately, Australia actually wanted them under US command.

My following book review appeared in yesterday’s Sydney’s Sun Herald newspaper:

AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Guantanamo: My Journey
David Hicks (William Heinemann, $49.95)
Reviewed by Antony Loewenstein

Almost 10 years after the Bush administration launched the ‘‘war on terror’’, the victims of the policy remain largely voiceless.

The unknown number of civilians murdered by Western bombs have no way to express their outrage. They are invisible, mostly in countries Australia has either occupied (Iraq or Afghanistan) or helped colonise (Pakistan).

But Australian David Hicks is a notable exception. Imprisoned for years in Guantanamo Bay, tortured and then tried before a flawed military commission, he now lives as a free man in Sydney. This book is an attempt to set the record straight from his perspective.

Critics of Hicks in the corporate press still abound. The Sydney Morning Herald columnist Gerard Henderson wrote in 2008 that there was ‘‘no need to analyse the case against Hicks advanced by the United States and Australian governments and/or other agencies’’. In fact, the opposite was true, with the legality of Hicks’s incarceration, the torture he suffered while there and the bogus ‘‘trial’’ all condemned by human rights groups and Attorney-General Robert McClelland, who said in 2003 that practices at Guantanamo Bay were ‘‘alien to Australians’ expectations of a fair trial’’.

More recently, Henderson claimed Hicks was in ‘‘denial’’ for not telling the truth about his behaviour and activities during the past decade, with his book (and supporters) having whitewashed his alleged consorting with al- Qaeda. Even ABC reporter Leigh Sales argued in The Australian that Hicks wasn’t entirely honest about his activities before and after September 11, 2001.

But only a fair and open civilian trial could conclusively determine the possible guilt or innocence of Hicks.

His reactions to the charges against him are relevant but My Journey carefully explains the Howard government’s capitulation to Washington dictates in the years after September 11. John Howard’s autobiography details his admiration of George W. Bush’s world view. Bush barely mentions Howard in his own recent book. A memoir is always selective in its focus.

The most revealing sections of this book concern illegal incarceration in Guantanamo Bay.

Hicks details guards who punished him for simply studying his legal options. He often asked for medical care to help stress fractures. Little help was given. ‘‘You’re not meant to be healthy or comfortable,’’ he was told.

Faeces flooded the cage where Hicks lived and slept, ignored by the American officials. Dirty and unwashed clothes were common. Deafening loud music was pumped into cells to disorientate prisoners. Hicks writes of having to urinate on himself while being shackled during countless hours of interrogation. Detainees on hunger strikes were regularly force-fed.

Many of these actions are defined as torture under international law and yet nobody has faced trial for imposing such restrictions.

Indeed, the Obama administration still retains the right to incarcerate individuals indefinitely without trial or even after they are found innocent. Guantanamo Bay remains open and Hicks notes grimly, as he arrives at the ‘‘notorious’’ Camp Five in 2005, the involvement of American multinationals Halliburton and Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR).

My Journey is written with workman-like efficiency. Glamorous prose is ignored, as it should be. Not unlike another Guantanamo Bay detainee illegally imprisoned and tortured, Briton Moazzam Begg, who wrote a book about the experience called Enemy Combatant, Hicks aims to tell readers what Australia (and Britain) supported in its desperate bid to stay on the good side of Bush.

Hicks isn’t proud of his previously anti-Semitic ravings, sent in letters to his family years ago, nor does he defend the violence committed by al-Qaeda. He strongly rejects ‘‘and always will, any claims that I was a terrorist or supporter of terrorism. My personal definition of a terrorist is a coward and a murderer.’’ He vehemently opposes occupation of lands such as Kosovo and Kashmir and demands the right to ‘‘bear arms and risk my life to help them’’.

This book won’t be the last word on Hicks. But it fairly stands as a personal tale of misdirection, struggle, hope, delusion and Western silence over torture.

The last significant individual abandoned by Canberra was legendary Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett. The true test of democracy is how the most unpopular individuals are treated by officialdom.

From a man who knows a few things about Australia abandoning its own citizens:

Former  Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks says WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will never receive a fair trial if he is handed over to US authorities.

Mr Hicks says he hopes the Australian government won’t abandon Mr Assange, as they did with him.

He also says it’s clear Mr Assange is the victim of a politically motivated campaign.

The WikiLeaks editor-in-chief is facing allegations of sexual assault and rape made against him in Sweden.

He has been granted conditional bail by a British court but remains in prison while Swedish authorities appeal the decision.

Mr Assange’s British lawyer Mark Stephens has claimed a secret US grand jury has been set up in Virginia to work on charges that could be filed against the Australian.

He fears Sweden might hand Mr Assange over the US, which has been embarrassed by WikiLeaks’ publication of US diplomatic cables.

Mr Hicks, who claims he was tortured at the US-run prison camp in Cuba, has told Fairfax Radio he’s worried about what might happen to the WikiLeaks boss if he’s sent to the US.

“He will never receive a fair trial,” he said.

“We have already established that it’s a political decision rather than a legal one. It’s important that our governments are held to account for any war crimes they may be involved in and that is why the work of WikiLeaks is so important.”

Mr Hicks said he was hopeful some of the documents being leaked might expose the political interference that tainted his case.

“I will watch with interest in more leaks released because I have heard that they might contain information about my treatment in Guantanamo and the political interference in my case,” he said.

“I just hope the Australian government doesn’t abandon him like they did to me.”

Mr Hicks, who pleaded guilty to a charge of supporting terrorism, was held at Guantanamo Bay for more than five years after being captured in Afghanistan in December 2001.

In March 2007, under a plea bargain, he was sentenced to seven years’ jail but ordered to serve only nine months with the rest of his sentence suspended.

He returned to Australia and was released from Adelaide’s Yatala Jail in December, 2007.

Wikileaks is bringing together some strange coalitions in Australia, individuals with different political views who recognise Julian Assange as a man who has dared challenge the establishment in ways rarely, if ever, seen. Of course the powerful hate him. But truths aren’t so easily dismissed. Only those who care so deeply about maintaining society’s status-quo won’t be moved to support this paradigm shifting idea.

Here’s Laurie Oakes in News Ltd:

The high point of the week on television was Foreign Affairs Minister Kevin Rudd flapping his elbows like wings and saying: “Quack, quack, quack.”

He was, of course, illustrating his claim that US embassy criticism of him in the WikiLeak cables is “water off a duck’s back”.

What else could the former prime minister do? It was either laugh or cry.

Miranda Devine in the Murdoch press:

The official fury unleashed against Assange is largely about the embarrassment WikiLeaks has created for diplomats.

But the United States is lucky it is Assange controlling the information, because he does abide by some sort of virtuous moral code.

Today’s Australian:

Julia Gillard is facing a revolt from MPs in her left-wing parliamentary faction, enraged at the treatment of Julian Assange.

The MPs are demanding the government stop treating Mr Assange as a criminal and protect his rights as an Australian citizen and whistleblower.

A large number of MPs have spoken to The Weekend Australian to express grave concerns at the language ministers and the Prime Minister are using in relation to Mr Assange.

Laurie Ferguson, a friend and factional colleague of Ms Gillard who was dumped as parliamentary secretary for multicultural affairs and settlement services, told The Weekend Australian the government had overreacted to the WikiLeaks release of secret US documents. He said the information that had been released was crucial to democracy and exposing the truth.

“It hasn’t been borne out that people have been endangered by this information,” Mr Ferguson said.

“On the other side of the ledger, I think it is important that the world is informed on how intense the Saudis are about Iran’s nuclear program and, for instance, that some members of the federal Labor Party caucus are so heavily engaged in briefing another nation.”

Mr Ferguson took a veiled swipe at Sports Minister Mark Arbib, saying he was glad it was now well-known that the right-wing Labor frontbencher was a secret source for the US government.

His comments came as Attorney-General Robert McClelland was yesterday unable to explain how Mr Assange had broken Australian law.

Mr McClelland indicated an Australian Federal Police investigation into whether WikiLeaks had committed a criminal act could go on for more than a year.

The government has come under fire after Ms Gillard appeared to pass judgment on Mr Assange, declaring that “the foundation stone of this WikiLeaks issue is an illegal act”.

One senior left-wing MP said, on the condition of anonymity, that the government had taken a “harsh” line on Mr Assange and had “angered” its left-wing base internally and in the community.

Another said Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd had “got it right” on the WikiLeaks case while Ms Gillard had “messed it up”.

Mr Rudd this week took aim at US security levels surrounding the handling of classified confidential information, rather than Mr Assange. He said those who originally leaked the documents were legally liable.

The left-wing Labor MP who heads the economics caucus committee, Sharon Grierson, said she had sympathy for Mr Assange because he believed in freedom of information and the public interest test being applied.

“It’s terribly important to keep asserting that Australians will always and do always look after their citizens,” Ms Grierson said. “They have rights and protection under the law, and we would all want to see those applied in that case.”

Ms Grierson said the world had embraced the open, globalised flow of information, and had to deal with its consequences. “We now have to find ways to respond to that which are reasonable, not irrational in any way,” she said.

West Australian Labor MP Melissa Parke said the Swedish rape charges against Mr Assange were unusual and he should not be treated as a criminal.

“I am concerned about the statements in the United States that Julian Assange or his family should be subjected to physical violence, and I strongly condemn them,” Ms Parke said.

“The charges from Sweden sound highly unusual on the basis of the information available, and I expect the British courts to take a long hard look at that before any decision on extradition is made.

“As to the actions of WikiLeaks and whether they have broken any laws, the fact is we don’t know. I think it is therefore wrong for anyone to suggest Julian Assange is a criminal.”

Hundreds of people in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne protested yesterday against the treatment of Mr Assange.

Criminal lawyer Rob Stary told a Melbourne rally the Australian government was a “sycophant” of the US.

He compared Mr Assange to fellow Australians David Hicks and Jack Thomas, saying their conviction on terrorism charges were helped by the government’s “propaganda machine”.

In Brisbane, lawyer Peter Russo, who defended Indian doctor Mohamed Haneef against failed terrorism charges, told a rally it was important to understand that the real issue at stake in the WikiLeaks case was freedom. “It’s not only the freedom of the individual, it’s the freedom of all of us.”

Activist group GetUp is buying advertisements in The New York Times and The Washington Times newspapers defending WikiLeaks. More than 50,000 people have signed the petition circulated by the group, which ran a vocal campaign against the treatment of Hicks.

Queensland MP Graham Perrett said he was a strong supporter of whistleblowing and transparency. “However I’m unsure that any indiscriminate mass release of information is going to ensure no lives are put at risk,” he said.

It was the government’s job to ensure Australian citizens were given full legal protection, Mr Perrett said.

“I would suggest we need to look after all of our citizens abroad, irrespective of what they are charged with,” he said.

“We must preserve the rule of law, and a fair trial is an essential part of this.”

Mr McClelland yesterday stressed it was not his responsibility to determine guilt or innocence.

He said the Australian Federal Police had been asked to examine whether any Australian laws had been breached by Mr Assange. But asked to clarify the government’s position, Mr McClelland repeated his assertion that it would be illegal in Australia to obtain or distribute classified documents.

“I said by way of analogy that if . . . serving military personnel or officer of the commonwealth had access to a similar database in Australia and took confidential national security classified information off that website and revealed it, I have no doubt it would raise issues of potential criminality.”

Asked about the AFP inquiries into the case, Mr McClelland said it took a long time for the investigation into leaks by public servant Godwin Grech to reach a conclusion, and people needed to take a “reality check”.

And Paul Kelly, the Serious Murdoch hack, writes in the Australian that closeness between Australia and America (who is fellating whom here?) is jolly healthy for all concerned:

Nobody should be surprised that the US embassy was speaking regularly to Labor figures such as NSW powerbroker Senator Mark Arbib, former minister Bob McMullan and MP Michael Danby.

It is a long tradition. The intimacy of political exchanges between the nations helps make the relationship special and has been facilitated by annual meetings of the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue.

In past decades the Americans had close ties with Bob Hawke, Kim Beazley and former senator Stephen Loosley. Rudd himself was a valued intimate of high-placed US officials in Washington when Labor was in opposition. This week Loosley told The Australian he had briefed the US nearly 20 years ago to expect Paul Keating to replace Hawke as PM. Insights into key events in domestic politics on both sides are integral to such exchanges.

You can lay money, however, these cables are mild compared with cables from the US embassy when Mark Latham was ALP leader. This provoked the greatest period of US alarm about Australia for decades. Concern about the damage Latham might perpetrate resonated at high levels in Washington, and Rudd and Beazley were involved in talks with US officials on how Latham could best be managed.

The practice of close ties between Labor’s right wing and the US tended to be overlooked during the Howard era given the media’s obsession about the links between John Howard and George W. Bush. That Arbib reassured the Americans about Julia Gillard is hardly a surprise. It is interesting, however, that he told them he backed the Iraq military commitment. The tradition of political intimacy between the ALP right wing and the US has passed to a new generation; witness Chris Bowen, Stephen Conroy, Bill Shorten and Arbib, each of them increasingly wired into US networks. These exchanges, of course, are not just one way. Australia has had a succession of Washington ambassadors with excellent inside contacts; witness John McCarthy, Andrew Peacock, Michael Thawley, Dennis Richardson and now Beazley. One of the consequences is that Howard expected Bush to become president in 2001 and had an agenda ready to greet him. In the context, talk about Arbib being an “agent of influence” or a US spy is naive and ignorant of how Australia-US relations are conducted.

My following article appears on ABC Unleashed today:

Who can now say that the WikiLeaks cables detail no new information?

It was only last week that ABC TV’s 7.30 Report featured a story with supposed foreign affairs experts, including the Lowy Institute’s Michael Fullilove, who largely dismissed the significance of the document dump. Within a few days these men were all proven wrong.

Now we know Labor powerbroker Mark Arbib sends confidential information to the Americans. He’s not alone.

Crucially, however, our media class aren’t asking the next obvious questions.

The Australian’s Paul Maley argues that communication between politicians, journalists and diplomats is part of the daily job.

“It is no surprise the Americans were talking to Arbib,” he writes, “They talk to everyone.”

And yet the senior Murdoch journalist doesn’t understand that the general public are rarely told about such meetings. What is discussed? What are the agendas? Is there transparency in such dealings? And who is telling what information to whom? Who benefits and what stories are not being told to avoid embarrassing somebody?

The cosiness between these players is exactly what WikiLeaks is aiming to challenge. Why shouldn’t the voting public be privy to whims and wishes of the American government and their relationships with key government ministers, individuals voted in by all of us? If Arbib was warning the Americans he thought Rudd may fall, why wasn’t he telling his constituents, the ones who put him in office?

The fact that the US had followed the rise of Julia Gillard and approved her views on the American alliance, Afghanistan and Israeli aggression is worrying though unsurprising.

It’s extremely rare that a leader rises who hasn’t received American approval or extensive years of obedience grooming. Former Labor leader Mark Latham was loathed by the US because he publicly expressed scepticism about the US alliance, the war in Iraq and then-president George W Bush.

It’s worth recalling that Latham called former prime minister John Howard an “arselicker” of the Bush administration and described a delegation of Liberal party politicians going to Washington as “a conga line of suckholes”.

Latham would undoubtedly use equally colourful language to describe Arbib and Kevin Rudd. So why did ABC TV’s 7.30 Report feel the need to mitigate the damage to Rudd and Australia with the latest release of cables this week by featuring a soft-ball interview with assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell?

Host Kerry O’Brien didn’t even blush when he acknowledged that, “he [Campbell] asked to come on the program to counter the damage from today’s exposure in Fairfax newspapers of the US embassy cables”. Since when is the ABC designed to offer air-time to a senior US official with a clear agenda to kiss and make up with Canberra? Moreover, viewers were expected to believe that Rudd was one of Barack Obama’s “best mates”?

The interview was symptomatic of the greater media malaise in this massive story; journalistic jealousy and closeness to state power.

The latest leaks that show profound Australian Government doubts over the Afghan mission are damning. Ministers are complicit but what about the journalists who visit Afghanistan, embed with our troops and paint an overly rose picture of brave men and women in a winnable war? Scepticism is often in short supply when reporting from the front lines.

When Hillary Clinton recently visited Australia, she was treated to a light interview with ABC’s Leigh Sales (who even Tweeted a grinning photo of the two). There were no challenging questions, just friendly banter and space for the Secretary of State to spin lines about loving Australia and its hospitality.

To learn a few weeks later, via WikiLeaks, that Clinton directed US officials across the world to spy on unsuspecting governments and UN officials should elicit outrage from a media fraternity that recently offered little more than obsequiousness before American power. There’s been not a peep.

Such obedience doesn’t come naturally; it takes years of practice. Annual events such as the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue – a secret gathering of politicians, journalists and opinion-makers – consolidate the unhealthy, uncritical relationship between Australia and America. Many corporate journalists have attended, including the Sydney Morning Herald’s Peter Hartcher and former Labor MP and ABC reporter Maxine McKew. It aims to consolidate American hegemony rather than challenging it.

It’s largely a one-way street. Australians display loyalty to an agenda and the Americans are allegedly thankful. As US participant Steve Clemons wrote in 2007:

“Phil Scanlan, founder of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue, is proud of the fact that in 15 years, no-one has leaked any of the internal conversations of the conference. I won’t either… unless I get permission from one of the speakers or commentators to do so which is allowed by the rules.”

The Australia-Israel Leadership Dialogue, inspired by the American one, is once again about to head to Israel for a short burst of Zionist propaganda. Journalists and politicians invariably return with the required Israeli talking points (let me guess this year; Iran is the greatest threat to the Middle East and the world?).

The Age’s Michelle Grattan tweeted this week of the post-WikiLeaks reality of the tour:

“All those pollies travelling to the Aust-Israel dialogue might be a bit more inclined to zip their lips in private.”

But why are such gatherings so secret? Why do journalists allow themselves to be romanced without revealing the kinds of agendas they’re pushing? It’s obvious why; being close to top officials and politicians makes them feel connected and important. Being an insider is many reporters’ ideal position. Independence is secondary to receiving sanctioned links and elevated status in a globalised world.

The WikiLeaks documents challenge the entire corrupted relationship between media and political elites. Founder Julian Assange is an outsider and doesn’t attend exclusive and secret meetings where the furthering of US foreign policy goals are on the cards. He aims to disrupt that dynamic. Many in the media resent not being leaked the information themselves and are jealous. Others simply dislike a lone-wolf citizen with remarkable tech-savvy to challenge their viability.

One can dismiss The Australian’s bragging of knowing virtually everything in the WikiLeaks cables before they were released – if only they more deeply scrutinised the effect of war policies they backed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and beyond – because the key point here isn’t merely covering disillusionment over Rudd or Gillard or anyone else. It’s something far bigger; a fundamental re-writing of the relationship between journalists and governments.

The WikiLeaks cable dumps have revealed a chasm between establishment attitudes towards truth-telling and furious attempts to protect the embarrassed. The sign of any healthy democracy is the ways in which it deals with the most sensitive of information. Senior media figures and government authorities are often remarkably consistent in their messaging. They move in similar worlds and they often rely on each other for sourcing.

It’s this kind of dangerous, mutual sycophancy that WikiLeaks could break.

Antony Loewenstein is a Sydney journalist, author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution and currently working on a book about disaster capitalism

The following guest post is written by reader Jim Dodrill:

It was announced today that Iraq war apologist General Peter Cosgrove has been appointed the new chancellor of Australian Catholic University.

This is an interesting development considering that Cosgrove, former head of the ADF during the Howard era, would have been well aware of warnings of a humanitarian disaster and the non-existence of Iraq’s link to terrorism or any arsenal of WMDs by experts like Britain’s Dr David Kelly, UN arms inspector Scott Ritter and Australia’s own intelligence expert, Andrew Wilkie.

Cosgrove, a Catholic, would also have been aware of warnings by Pope John Paul II that war with Iraq was “a defeat for humanity which could not be morally or legally justified.”

The pope said the U.N. charter and international law “remind us war cannot be decided upon, even when it is a matter of ensuring the common good, except as the last option and in accordance with very strict conditions, without ignoring the consequences for the civilian population both during and after the military options.”

Yet Cosgrove ignored the leaders of his own Church and chose to follow the leaders of the western military-industrial complex into a war which ignored international law and turned Iraq into a humanitarian disaster which would only serve to promote anti-western hatred and terrorism. Why then has Cardinal George Pell and the ACU decided to appoint Cosgrove to such a prestigious position in the Australian Catholic Church?

Australia’s new refugee policy is truly a “he-man” competition. Who can seem toughest on those evil people smugglers? Who can maximise political capital over the handful of desperate souls from Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Iraq keen to make a better life?

Opening a regional processing centre in East Timor smacks of a typical Western colonial mentality; bribe a poor neighbour to take our mess (and close the door on the way out):

It’s not the Pacific Solution — it’s the Timor Sea Solution.

Julia Gillard’s decision to ask East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta to allow a regional processing centre on his island sounds familar — as familiar as John Howard setting up just such a camp on Nauru.

Turning the boats back, she says, is a shallow slogan that amounts to nonsense. And so it is. She makes no bones about Tony Abbott’s claim that this is what he would do. The asylum seekers would simply sabotage their boats and Australian authorities would have to rescue them, she says. Shades of children overboard.

Gillard’s whole approach is to stop the boats, however. The message she wants sent is that asylum seekers shouldn’t get in boats in the first place.

And how is that message to be delivered? Get in a boat for Australia and you’ll find yourself delivered to East Timor quick smart.

No matter how Gillard tried to couch her words, she is in John Howard territory.

Dom Knight has it about right:

Let’s be more humane to these poor asylum seekers, as we ship them off to a place that’s less pleasant than Indonesia. I’m in awe, JG. Awe.

My following article appears in today’s edition of Crikey:

The Australian government’s decision to re-open the Curtin detention centre in Western Australia has attracted predictable outrage from previous detainees and refugee groups but missing from the media coverage was any mention of who will run the facility.

British multinational Serco is in charge of the remote, one-time Australian air force base, having won a contract in June last year to manage all of Australia’s immigration centres. After the successful bid of $370 million for five years work, Serco Australia chief executive David Campbell said that “the government’s new immigration detention values very much align with Serco’s own values”.

Labor pledged before the 2007 election to place the detention centres back in public hands.

A spokesman from the Immigration Department told Crikey that when the original contract was signed in 2009 between Serco and the Australian government, the possibility of opening new detention centres was not discussed but he was optimistic the company would comply with the new demands.

When asked about the sexual and psychological trauma suffered by detainees and guards at Curtin during the Howard years, the spokesman said that “policy settings” were different under the Rudd government and more accountability was now possible. No evidence was given for this claim. Curtin was chosen to keep the asylum seekers because “the infrastructure is already there and it’s the best option to house people. It will stay open as long as necessary”.

Serco has received negative press in Britain after cases of neglect emerged from inside its privately run prisons and detention centres. Before Christmas last year the company was embarrassed after guards at the Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre refused entry to Anglican ministers dressed as Santa Claus who wanted to give gifts to the children inside. They were regarded as a “security threat”.

Britain’s Children Commissioner released a damning report in April 2009 that found systemic failures of treatment at Yarl’s Wood, violent handling of children and ignoring of serious mental health problems.

But Serco’s contract with the Australian government helped the company’s profits soar 34% in the first half of the year. The organisation is valued at about $5 billion.

“There are more opportunities than we are able to bid for,” said chief executive Christopher Hyman in February. Out-sourcing of government services are booming, especially in Britain.

Hyman, an Indian Pentecostal Christian from South Africa, told the Guardian in 2006 that he was “very passionate about our values and building this company not to make a profit. If you can make it have an impact on society, people’s lives and make it fun, crumbs, then we don’t have to worry about making this profit or that.”

In Australia, concerns over Serco’s management of Curtin are rising. Crikey spoke to UNSW law lecturer Mike Grewcock, author of the book Border Crimes, who said that the lack of judicial oversight of the detention centre was worrying. “In 2001, the then Inspector of Custodial Services for Western Australia described detainees as living ‘in gulag conditions’ and argued that if it had been an ordinary jail the prisoners would not have tolerated such conditions.”

Grewcock acknowledges that the previous company running Curtin no longer manage the centre but “the fundamental relationship between the Immigration Department and the private operators remains the same. The department locks up refugees in circumstances it knows will cause extensive anguish and harm and pays multinational security corporations to make sure the centres operate ‘efficiently’. It is a morally indefensible arrangement.”

Serco was recently fined by the Immigration Department after three Chinese nationals escaped from the Villawood detention centre.

Former Curtin detainee and now Australian citizen, Iranian-born Farshid Kheirollahpoor, says that the relationship between the Howard government and then private manager of Curtin about 2000, ACM, was unhealthy. “ACM realised that they could take financial advantage of the emotional distress in the centre, ” he said. “ACM could ask for more guards and deliberately not manage the problems. The government would then offer more funds.”

Kheirollahpoor saw ACM guards often drunk and beat and abuse detainees. He says the company “wanted to allow the demonisation of refugees and force asylum seekers to act in a way that would make the Australian people hate them”.

Crikey made repeated calls to Serco seeking comment on their exact role at Curtin but no response was forthcoming.

Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist and author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution.

After the Australian government announced the re-opening of the remote Curtin detention centre, these suggestions are completely supported:

Human rights barrister Julian Burnside QC, who was an outspoken opponent of the Howard government’s asylum-seeker policies, said the Rudd government was following the same policy trajectory and urged people to punish Labor by voting for the Greens in the Senate.

“Curtin is about 28 hours drive north of Perth — it’s just insane. I think one of the problems is if people are isolated like that and they don’t get community support that we know Australians are capable of giving, they will very likely experience greatly increased mental distress,” he said. “The fact that this is being done with a punitive intent to send a message to other people is precisely what the Howard government was doing, and I think it’s deplorable.”

Speaking of “journalists” who love Israel like an old wine; juicy if you know where to lick but corrupt to the core. Over to you, Murdoch columnist Greg Sheridan:

The Australia-Israel relationship, normally a byword for geostrategic stability and enduring human warmth, has had some stormy passages lately.

The use of Australian passports by the agents, presumably from Mossad, who assassinated a Hamas terrorist in Dubai led to unusually strong criticism of Israel from Kevin Rudd and Stephen Smith. Australia changed its vote from oppose to abstain at the UN on a resolution requiring Israel and Hamas to investigate alleged war crimes as demanded in the widely discredited Goldstone report. This was a clear if unstated punishment of Israel for the passports breach.

Then there were needlessly energetic comments by Foreign Minister Smith condemning Israel over the recent announcement of 1600 new housing units to be built in East Jerusalem, on which more later.

This makes it all the more remarkable, and reassuring, that Smith yesterday hosted a bipartisan ceremony to accept a report – prepared by the Australia Israel Leadership Forum, founded by Melbourne businessman Albert Dadon – with recommendations for enhancing the Australia-Israel relationship.

The forum, in which I have participated, brings together a range of Israelis and Australians for annual strategic dialogue in the broadest sense. The Australian delegation in its two meetings has been led by Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote a letter endorsing the work of the forum and saying he will consider its recommendations.

The report makes four important suggestions.

The first is that Australian military staff colleges should host Israeli officers. This is a brilliant idea. Our staff colleges routinely host Arab officers and this is all to the good. We deploy a lot of Australian forces in and around the Middle East and, as a result, we have developed effective working relations with a number of Arab militaries. But we are a strategic and political ally of Israel. The absence of Israelis from these courses is a serious gap and has a small but ongoing effect on our military culture.

Arab and Israeli officers routinely attend US staff colleges together. It’s good for both of them. They have to put up with each other if they want the benefit of American military staff colleges. It helps dialogue all around and it gives expression to the true nature of the US-Israel relationship. There is absolutely no reason Australia should not do this.

I would add a recommendation the report leaves out. Australia should have an annual or biennial full strategic dialogue with Israel. We do have very high level intelligence exchanges but, given the depth of our investment in the Middle East, we should also exchange deep and wide strategic views. We could learn something, and perhaps we could teach something. Our military work in Afghanistan is overwhelmingly among civilian populations, just as is most of Israel’s military involvement. Operationally, ethically, in every way we have things to talk about.

Recommendation No 2 is for a free trade agreement. This is also a brilliant idea. Australian trade with Israel is small, just about $1 billion a year. But Israel is a world leader in innovation and commercialisation. We could and should do much more together.

Third, Israel’s experience with improving Bedouin health and Australia’s struggle to do the same with Aboriginal health ought to be the basis for co-operation, comparison and mutual teaching.

Finally, the report recommends auditing and giving life to the plethora of bilateral agreements that have become moribund through the years. This is a practical and very useful document.

Smith reiterated at its launch that despite recent controversies there has been no change in Australia’s deep friendship with and commitment to Israel.

Smith did the right thing by accepting the report, committing the government to considering it seriously and reiterating Australia’s support for Israel.

And Opposition Deputy Leader Julie Bishop supported him on behalf of the Coalition.

Overall, the Rudd government displays only marginally less solidarity with Israel than the Howard government did. It has changed a couple of Australian votes at the UN, but not many. No one seriously doubts that this is an attempt, almost certainly forlorn, to curry favour with the Arab League in our quixotic and pointless quest for a non-permanent UN Security Council seat. This worthless bid is distorting our foreign policy, but so far mainly at the margins.

Similar considerations probably animate Smith’s overreaction to the 1600 Israeli apartments to be built, in three years, in East Jerusalem. This is in some eerie ways a minor imitation of the Obama administration’s gross overreaction. Whereas the Rudd government is courting votes for a tawdry UN election, Barack Obama plainly sees the quest to redefine the US relationship with the Muslim world as central to his historic mission, and part of this involves dumping on the Israelis.

Thus the Palestinian Authority for 12 months refused to negotiate with Israel; that was fine. It then named a square after a female suicide bomber who killed 37 civilians, including 13 children. No hint of a US rebuke there. But Israel announcing the apartments is apparently the end of Middle East peace as we know it.

Don’t get me wrong. I think the Israeli government was extremely stupid to announce the apartments while US Vice-President Joe Biden was visiting Israel. But Netanyahu’s temporary freeze on building in the West Bank never included East Jerusalem. There are Jewish parts of East Jerusalem that every serious player knows will stay with Israel in any peace deal. They were staying with Israel under the Bill Clinton mandated offer to the Palestinians in 2000, and under the even more generous plan put by Ehud Olmert in 2008.

In other words, as usual, Israel got the public relations and political management wrong but the substance right. The Obama administration was notably unmoved by rape and murder as a political tactic in Iran; is offering endless concessions to Syria, which treats Washington with studied contempt; and will never criticise the Palestinian Authority. It is developing a very bad tendency to constantly flatter its enemies in the fantastical hope of engaging and converting them, while abusing its friends, to show its even-handedness.

Canberra has no need to go down that same road.

This useful report helps it choose a better road instead.

Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz has a love affair with Israel that has no bounds.

It’s therefore unsurprising that he supports Israel’s recent assassination in Dubai:

The complaints leveled against Israel by European countries and Australia, regarding the alleged misuse of passports by the Mossad in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, ring hollow and smack of blatant hypocrisy.  Whoever did kill Mahmoud al-Mabhouh—whether it was the Israeli Mossad or someone else—clearly did have their agents use stolen or forged passports.  Big deal.

Every good intelligence agency uses stolen and forged passports.  The British have been especially adept at this means of spycraft.  No country that uses fake passports in their intelligence operations has the moral authority to complain about the alleged misuse of passports in this case.  The only ones that have a legitimate grievance are those individuals whose passports may have been misused without their knowledge.

I guess it’s the job of foreign ministries to complain publicly when other nations do what they themselves do secretly.  Hypocrisy is, after all, the homage that vice pays to virtue.  I’m reminded of the famous scene in Casablanca, when officer Renault declares, “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” A croupier then approaches Renault, and hands him a roll of currency: “Your winnings, sir.”

The hypocrisy in this case seems even more blatant than usual.  Is it because Israel is the alleged offender, and the world has gotten accustomed to singling out Israel for double standard condemnation?

Shortly after the terrorist attacks in Bali, which killed a large number of Australian tourists, I had the opportunity to meet with the Australian Prime Minister.  I was writing a book at the time on preemption, and I asked him whether he would have authorized a preemptive attack on the terrorist who killed Australian citizens, if such an attack would have saved their lives.  His response was that Australia would have done anything it could, to prevent these terrorist attacks.  Anything, I guess, except misusing passports!  Is there anybody who believes that Australia would not have used forged or stolen passports to prevent the Bali massacres?  If Great Britain could have stopped the London subway attack by misusing passports, would M6 have allowed the terrorism to go forward in the name of preserving passport integrity?  Of course not.  The same is true of Spain with regard to the Madrid bombing and to every other country in the world that seeks to prevent terrorism.  Well, if the Mossad did in fact kill al-Mabhouh, they too did it to prevent the killing of their innocent civilians.

Unsure what to really think of the Iraq war? Let Murdoch’s Australian guide you through the complexity:

Tony Blair was called a murderer on Friday by outraged activists after his evidence before the Chilcot inquiry into the origins of the war to remove Saddam Hussein.

It is the sort of foolish sloganising that always characterised the case against the invasion. While there is no doubting claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in 2003 were plain wrong, there is no denying he had used them in the past. That Saddam also wanted the world, specifically his enemies in Iran, to believe he still had WMD was revealed last year in declassified FBI interviews with the dictator. Certainly Mr Blair, like George W. Bush and John Howard, was too willing to act on poor-quality intelligence, but this does not make Saddam innocent of crimes against the Iraqi people committed over decades, of being a threat to the peace of the Middle East and the wider world. Nor is there any denying the US and British occupation of Iraq was badly planned and initially poorly managed, that the Americans in particular were not capable of defending the Iraqi people against terrorists determined to kill to stop democracy being established. But this does not mean Mr Blair was wrong. He acted in the interests of Britain, its allies and as we know now with democracy taking hold in Iraq, the people of that long-suffering country.

That’s sorted then.

My following article appears in today’s Crikey:

The news that defeated Sri Lankan presidential candidate and former army chief Sarath Fonseka may claim temporary asylum in Australia due to fears for his life  is the latest saga in the country’s ongoing tragedy.

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith denies that Australian officials in Colombo ever received an approach by Fonseka and the man himself now denies seeking asylum.

The International Crisis Group late last week  said that Fonseka could justifiably be concerned for his personal safety due to incumbent Mahinda Rajapakse’s brutal dictatorship that tolerates no real dissent.

Fonseka’s party’s offices have been raided in Colombo and many of his supporters arrested. He now threatens to make information public that highlights the murky world of disappearances and murders over past years. Journalists have been particularly vulnerable.

But this is not the typical story of an election loser. Fonseka is front and centre of serious allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the regime’s 2009 military defeat of the Tamil Tigers.

He fled America in November last year before US officials could interview him over alleged war crimes and by year’s end he had accused Sri Lanka’s defence minister, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, the President’s brother, of ordering the killing of surrendering Tiger rebels in May.

The People’s Tribunal on Sri Lanka, held by distinguished judges and witnesses in Dublin in January, found Sri Lanka was guilty of “war crimes” but charges of “genocide” would have to be investigated further.

I have spoken to several individuals who were in the combat zone in the final months of last year’s war and they have detailed the government’s deliberate shelling and bombing of civilians and infrastructure, including hospitals. Human Rights Watch has demanded international accountability for countless violations.

Jake Lynch, director of Sydney University’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, has documented Canberra’s “official hand-wringing … accompanied by a notable pusillanimity” when faced with Sri Lanka’s crimes. Trade has trumped human rights time and time again.

For Australia to even consider Fonseka’s potential application for asylum would be a grave breach of international law, with serious charges in desperate need of investigation.

Sadly, it would also be unsurprising in the context of Australia’s history of welcoming war criminals and those accused of genocide.

Successive Australian governments, from both sides of politics, have dragged their heels in seriously pursuing the accused. An ABC TV 7.30 Report from 1999 named three suspected war criminals, including Latvians Konrad Kalejs, Carlos Ozols and Heinrich Wagner, allegedly involved in an Ukranian death squad during World War Two.

“Any suggestion that we’re half-hearted about pursuing this matter [prosecuting Nazi war criminals], I frankly find quite offensive,”  said then Justice Minister Amanda Vanstone. Yet the Howard government failed as miserably as all governments before them. The current circus over suspected Hungarian war criminal Charles Zentai is only compounding the problem.

In his book War Criminals Welcome (Black Inc, 2001), Mark Aarons reveals the litany of suspected murderers allowed to live free in Australia. Former fighters in the Soviet-controlled Afghan army who executed members of the Mujahadeen, Serbian paramilitary units, Rwandan and Croat killers and Nazi suspects all thrived here due to government “indifference”.

“I think it’s the only crime in Australian law,” Aarons told ABC TV’s Lateline in 2001, “where journalists and the communities affected by the crime are expected to produce the evidence and to conduct the investigations.”

This is exactly what happened when an East Timorese woman recognised in 2008 a World Youth Day pilgrim as Gui Campos, a member of the Indonesian military’s Intelligence Task Force in East Timor during the 1990s and accused torturer during Indonesia’s occupation.

The Lowy Institute released a report last year that highlighted the systemic failures in pursuing war criminals. The conclusion was grim and almost pleaded for the Rudd government to take its global responsibilities seriously, if for no other reason than to, “demonstrate its credentials as a good international citizen in the context of its bid to win a UN Security Council seat.”

Discussing an application from Sareth Fonseka should not allow Australian officials to forget the other prominent Sri Lankan figure on suspicion of war crimes. Dr Palitha Kohona, a dual Sri Lankan/Australian citizen and current Sri Lankan UN representative in New York, is alleged to have negotiated the surrender of senior Tamil Tigers in the closing days of the war (the Tigers were allegedly shot in cold blood). His public comments on the matter have varied widely. He called in May 2009 the aerial bombardment of civilians justified then changed his mind a few weeks later.

Again, an Australian citizen is accused of serious war crimes; ANU Professor of International Law Don Rothwell has said the information warrants a preliminary investigation and yet authorities have remained silent.

Of course, the issue of investigating war crimes should not be solely directed at leaders and officials in developing countries. The international legal system remains fundamentally deficient due to the highly selective nature of its usual mandate. Why, for example, aren’t there serious questions asked when senior Israeli ministers visit Australia, some of whom are accused by the UN Goldstone Report of committing war crimes in Gaza?

The aftermath of Sri Lanka’s recently disputed election puts even more pressure on Canberra to take its global responsibilities seriously. Failing to do so would simply add another chapter in the already dismal history of Australia allowing sanctuary to killers, brutes and generals.

They don’t deserve a relaxing retirement.

Antony Loewenstein is a Sydney journalist and author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution.