On Saturday afternoons, I take to my couch. Not for a siesta, but to seek. Laden with the weekend editions of the Age and Australian newspapers, I try, you see, to make some sort of sense of the week’s events, hoping to arrive at a consensus between their competing commentaries. More and more, I find there’s a lot more writing in the Australian, decreasingly and depressingly so in the Age. It is correspondingly becoming increasingly arduous to reach a balanced view. At times, quantity can tend to overwhelm the reader and his opinions.

But what caught my attention was a report in the Australian (Saturday 6 April) of a speech Rupert Murdoch had given to the Institute of Public Affairs on 4 April 2013. A conservative ‘think tank’, the IPA was celebrating its 70^th anniversary, and Rupert was its guest speaker. The report, startlingly captioned Markets Radiate Morality, was juxtaposed with an equally eye-catching photograph of the patrician publisher himself. Nothing at all about the IPA’s anniversary or Rupert’s speech was reported in the Age, thereby vindicating the morality of my even-handed purchase of both papers.

To read this article in full, click HERE.

Photo McCain speech on economic crisis 9/19/08 by mattlehrer, flickr cc.

Very disturbing questions are arising from reports of Australian intelligence officers rebutting claims by former prime minister, John Howard, that their advice supported allegations of an imminent threat from
Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.

Howard repeatedly claimed that he had clear and conclusive evidence about the imminent threat from Saddam’s weapons, and on this basis decided to join the invasion of Iraq in 2003, along with the USA and Britain. No other country joined this invasion, not even erstwhile US allies like Canada and New Zealand.

Howard and others in his government later maintained that they were surprised no weapons of mass destruction were found following the invasion.

This apologia has been blown apart by revelations that intelligence agencies advised the Australian government that Saddam’s regime had very few chemical or biological weapons left, and was not an imminent danger to other countries. Moreover, there was no evidence that Saddam had been involved in terrorist attacks on the United States, despite claims to the contrary.

Former Liberal Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, is among a group of eminent Australians calling for an enquiry into Australia’s involvement in the Iraq war. Such calls will likely become much increasingly insistent, as it appears that the  Howard government deliberately misled the Australian people into the war against the advice of its own intelligence agencies. As Fraser said, “the war was begun on the basis of a lie”. In response to Howard’s address at the Lowy Institute on 9 April, the secretary of the Intelligence Committee from 2002 to 2007, Margaret Swieringa, replied in an explosive article in the Ageon 12 April:“None of the government’s arguments were supported by the intelligence presented to it by its own agencies. None of these arguments were true.”

The implications of these revelations are very serious: that government leaders manipulated intelligence reports as pretexts for the invasion of Iraq, in defiance of international law and violating key criteria of the western tradition of just war, on which international relations and peacekeeping rely so heavily.

Not only did these leaders deliberately, it seems, mislead the Australian people, they did so in the face of widespread opposition from leading thinkers, huge mass protests, and the concerns of most churches and social policy connections religious networks internationally. Pope John Paul II himself led the Catholic Church in opposing the invasion, with the support of all the major bishops’ conferences  hroughout the world, including that of the USA itself.

The churches have historically been key custodians of the just war tradition to constrain violence and warfare. Yet for the first time in our history, Howard took Australia to war against firm opposition from the churches.

Many people at the time supported the war in Iraq on the presumption that the government must have had very reliable information on which to base its decision, even if it had not fully revealed this. It is now very clear that this was not the case. The reasons the Howard government adduced were simply spurious.

Many of those who had studied the debate closely already knew this. There was a wealth of information from highly reputable institutes and expert commentators, challenging the claims of the Bush Administration and the British Blair government about Saddam having weapons of mass destruction, posing an imminent threat, and being linked to Al Qaeda.

Before the war I assembled such data in a 17,000- word pamphlet, War on Iraq: Is it Just? published by the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council, rebutting the arguments for war. How is it that my critique was so accurate, while the Howard government could be so wrong? My point is, the truth was not hard to determine.

The responsibility does not lie with Howard alone. Others were implicated in this collapse of moral values and judgement, including membersof his government (some of them still in office),their advisers, and sections of the media.What accountability will there now be for all this,with such savage consequences for millions of people worldwide? Australia could have played a constructive role in restraining the United States and Britain from this venture. Instead, our government encouraged the rush to war.

The full import of the apparent deceit of the Howard government has yet to hit home to Australians. If it is true that our government deliberately misled our country on such a grave issue, is it acceptable that those responsible can simply walk away, with no accountability whatever?

As Dr Margaret Beavis from the Medical Association for the Prevention of War pointed out in the Age on 12 April, how do we ensure that a future prime minister no longer has the power to involve Australia in war?

And what of the media and commentators who campaigned so diligently on the case for war, particularly in the Murdoch press and other media networks? Was it simply a means to make money from the media, or
ideology and political manoeuvring? Is there no accountability here either?

Dr Bruce Duncan lectures in history and social ethics in the MCD University of Divinity, including courses on war and peace.

To read this article in full, click HERE.

Image:March against war in Iraq by Flyover Living, flickr cc

The tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq fell on 19 March, but one wonders if we have learned the lessons from that war. To mark the anniversary in Iraq, a bomb killed 50 people and wounded many more. For a country of 24.6 million in 2003 (31 million in 2012), the constant random killing and violence seem endless.

We know now, of course, that the two major pretexts for the invasion were at least erroneous, if not outright lies: that Iraq was intent on building weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear ones, and that it was implicated in the terrorist attacks on the United States.

To read this article in full, click HERE.

Readers of this newsletter will be aware of the new leadership of worldwide Christians that we have just seen installed. Just how has this taken place, and what will it mean?

You may be wondering just what Jorge Mario Bergoglio, elected Pope on 13 March, will bring as the 266th Bishop of Rome. Others might be wondering just what Justin Welby, installed as Archbishop of Canterbury on 21 March, will bring as the 105th occupant of the Chair of Saint Augustine.

It’s been observed that rarely have these two positions been occupied by such similar individuals as the immediate predecessors of the new Pope and the new ’Cantuar’ (as the Archbishop of Canterbury is known by the  Anglican cognoscenti). Both Pope Benedict and Archbishop Rowan Williams are highly regarded scholars, both are described as introverts, both have been known to carry very seriously the weight of their high office and the major challenges confronting them. Both were in their respective roles for roughly the same period.

Their respective successors seem to be very different — and it is a well known factor in organisations that new appointments regularly reflect qualities seen as deficiencies, or even weaknesses, in their immediate predecessors.

So, what of these newly installed successors, their backgrounds, how they were appointed, and most significantly, what challenges do they face as they take up their roles as Christian leaders in 2013?

To read this article in full, click HERE.

Photo His Holiness Pope Francis by Christus Vincent, flickr cc.

Note This article was written prior to Stephen Smith’s announcements concerning Australia’s commitments in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan has been described as ‘the graveyard of empires’. The British suffered defeats there before reaching agreement on the border between India and Afghanistan during the great empire game with Russia in the 19th century. The former Soviet Union, too, had its nose well and truly bloodied when it invaded and occupied in 1979-883. The country is made up of tribal regions – only in 1747 did a leader of the Pushtun form a confederacy, and not until the 1830s did it take on the appearance of a single nation. Yet violence seems endemic; a hostile geographical environment hinders communications; the climate is very harsh; and above all there seems a fierceness in the people who defend their lands. It is traditionally peopled by regional tribes headed by warlords.

When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, 
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains,
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier. 
Rudyard Kipling The Young British Soldier

To read this article in full, click HERE.

Photo courtesy San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives, flickr cc.

On 6 January 2013, Paul Grundy (12 May 1935-6 January 2013) died, after a very distinguished life and career. Professor Emeritus with Monash University, Paul was a consultant across many fields of engineering structures, especially his great love, bridges, such as the Westgate Bridge and in many places including in East Asia where he was a leading light on tsunami recovery and disaster preparation. His humanitarian approach to his work owes much to a period in the Newman Society in Melbourne, especially in the 1950s. Here, he experienced a deep spiritual training, and himself made a significant contribution to the life of this lay apostolate community.

What follows is a paper he wrote about that experience, published in the collection Golden Years, Grounds for Hope – Father Golden and the Newman Society 1950-1966 (eds Val Noone, Terry Burke, Mary Doyle, Helen Praetz, 2008). The paper shows how, for Paul, work as an engineer was integrated within a deep spiritual life founded on a love of nature and of the life of Christ and his Incarnation.

Len Puglisi

A new heaven and a new earth

by Paul Grundy

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.
Revelation 21:1

My father was a World War I veteran with degrees in arts and engineering, and a devout Catholic. At the time of his death, when I was 14, he held the position of deputy chief engineer in the sewerage department of the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works.

My mother was a convert to Catholicism, due, she said, to the example of Cardinal Newman. She brought to the household a Swedish and un-Australian respect for engineering. In spite of my fascination with mathematics, and even a passing interest in English literature when there was time,
I was destined for engineering. There was nothing the Jesuits could do about it.

To read this article in full, click HERE.

The need for alternative economics

In recent years, I have taken part in a lot of discussions about sustainability. I have found that many people agree we must work towards a profound transformation in our culture and in its patterns of production and consumption if we are to find a way out of the present environmental crisis. People then raise one particular urgent question: can there be a different kind of economy that will be sustainable, and will it work?

The failure of current economics

Our patterns of consumption within the present economic system cannot be sustained. The impacts of global warming include, for example, the melting of Arctic sea ice. Yet the very industries that played a major role in causing this now see it as a source of profit through access to new resources. The further extraction will in turn increase global warming and its effects. Such is the way that our current system works.

To read this article in full, click HERE.

Photo Global Markets' Meltdown by MyEyeSees, flickr cc.

Australia has so far escaped much of the havoc caused by the global financial crisis, but it is not immune to the effects of economic ideology, particularly free-market neoliberalism, which typically calls for reduced public spending, balanced budgets, wage and tax cuts, and a reduced role for governments. We can see the effects of these views, with the Victorian government recently announcing cuts of 4,200 public service jobs, and sharply reduced spending on TAFEs. The Queensland government is abolishing 14,000 public service jobs, many in health services, and reducing spending on social services and housing. Even the Commonwealth government is not immune to pressure, as it struggles to produce a surplus budget.

To read Bruce Duncan’s article in full, CLICK here. To read the article on the Eureka Street website, CLICK here.

With the Senate passing legislation authorising offshore processing, there are small but significant details not outlined in the legislation or the expert panel report lead by Angus Houston that could make a stark difference to the treatment of asylum seekers redirected either to Nauru or to PNG, or, in time, to other locations in the region.

Contrary to what may be inferred from the current political debate, offshore processing is only one part of a much more integrated plan outlined by the Houston team on how to improve protection for asylum seekers in the region for the long term. Not surprisingly, the offshore processing element of the Houston team report is receiving the most significant attention, but there is an assumption about how it will be operated that needs to be challenged.

To read this article in full, click HERE. Reprinted with permission from crikey.com.au 

Photo Christmas Island Immigration Detention Centre by DIAC, flickr cc.

The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL)  – the NGO leader on this issue – estimates that around 4,000-5,000 people were maimed or killed by landmines last year alone, and that millions more suffer from the agricultural, economic, and psychological impacts of the weapons. They estimate that there are still tens of millions of landmines in the ground in 78 countries. And UNICEF estimates that 30-40 percent of victims are children under 15 years of age. To read this article in full, click HERE.

Photo Landmine by Duke Human Rights Center Robin Kirk, flickr cc