The following articles were published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, July 10th, 2002. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795.
CPA Central Committee: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "The Guardian": <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Webpage: http://www.cpa.org.au> Subscription rates on request. ****************************** Editorial: Howard plays US game in Europe While in Germany recently on his European tour, Prime Minister Howard was at pains to declare the importance of Australia's relationship with Germany "separate and apart from the European Union". He went on, "we will get more out of it if we deal directly with individual countries rather than going through the [European] Union because like all supranational bodies it is slow moving and it's bureaucratic." How the "bureaucrats" of Brussels felt about that criticism is not reported but it indicates a significant shift in Australia's attitude to Europe. The Australian Government had been a strong supporter of the European Union. One of Howard's missions was to try to get some movement on agricultural tariffs. European agricultural support programs are even higher than those of the US. Whether he thinks that it will be possible to split the countries of the European Union by making appeals to individual countries is not clear but, if that is the tactic, it is unlikely to succeed. It is also a game that the United States is playing. The Australian Financial Review under the headline "Howard changes tack on EU", says that the US also tries "to get around the EC -- most recently in an unsuccessful attempt to split the 15-nation EU and weaken its resolve to impose retaliatory sanctions against US steel tariffs." So, there we have it! Perhaps for slightly different reasons, both the US and Australia are attempting to bring about a split in European Union ranks. As the Sydney Morning Herald (5/7/02) also points out, "... the EU with its planned expansion in 2004, will soon be home to 500 million people, almost twice the US population." The European Union is emerging as a strong economic competitor and a range of political differences with the US are emerging -- such as over the Kyoto environmental protocols, the International Criminal Court, the bombing of Iraq, American incarceration of alleged all-Qaida prisoners on Guantanomo Bay and the violation of their human rights, peace-keeping operations and over the acceptance of the rule of international law. The US is continually disregarding its UN obligations and the accepted norms of behaviour between nations. John Palmer, the director of the European Policy Centre in Brussels is reported as saying: "The European view is that even the most powerful of states should be constrained by the international rule of law". In this contest of ideas and policies, John Howard comes down hard on the side of the US and supports any criminal activity that the US leadership attempts to impose on the world. While talking to the Deutsche Bank, Howard claimed that Australia occupies "a quite unique intersection of history, geography and culture. Australia alone is a country simultaneously of western European origin with very strong and enduring common values and links with north America, but located in the Asian Pacific region". He did not have anything to say about Australia's links with Asia, except to comment that other than English, Chinese is the most frequently spoken language in Sydney. What Howard is actually doing is attempting to sell Australia as a desirable outpost of European and American imperialism in Asia, just as some of his Parliamentary forebears did at the beginning of the 20th century when the task at hand was to promote and protect British colonialism in Asia. It is now a century ago that Senator Staniford declared in 1901 that "nothing could tend to solidify and strengthen the Empire so much as that we should build up in these southern lands a British race." In selling his agenda for success, Howard claimed that "the aggregate national benefit has to be identified ... and [policies] must have a fair and even impact on all the citizens of the country". Howard called for a "compassionate capitalism". One can only marvel at the self-deception and dishonesty. What is fair about the GST, the attempt to disadvantage disability pensioners, the tax cuts to the wealthy, the objective of destroying Medicare, the huge increase in subsidies to private schools and the cutbacks to allocations to public schools? But then his audience was the big wheels in Deutsche Bank and they are playing the say game, so, they were probably impressed. Howard concluded by saluting Germany's "contribution to the cause of freedom round the world". It is convenient these days to forget about Nazism and the millions of people who lost their lives in the struggle to end that bestial system. But then, Howard's favourite politician, Robert Menzies, was an admirer of fascism. -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
