Gareth Evans, the chancellor of the Australian National University, former head of the International Crisis Group and former foreign minister, is not giving up. He wrote in The Australian Financial Review last year that Australia should vote “yes” in the United Nations to Palestine becoming a full member. He was ignored. Kevin Rudd thought we should abstain but Julia Gillard followed the US-Israeli line and voted “no”.
Evans was back in the fight on Australia Day, using an address in Melbourne to lambast the Gillard government for not “repositioning Australia on the global stage” nor being a “decent and committed international citizen” on issues like Israel-Palestine, instead letting “domestic political considerations” rule foreign policy.
Labor’s official policy speaks of an “even-handed” approach, ensuring the freedom, security and independence of both peoples. But behind the scenes modern Labor leaders fall over themselves to reassure Israel of their allegiance – from Bob Hawke’s “emotional” meetings with Israeli prime ministers to Rudd having Israel “in his DNA” and Gillard’s close public association with the new Australia-Israel Leadership Forum.

But polls now show that while Hawke might have reflected Australian attitudes in the 1980s, in the 21st century Rudd and Gillard certainly don’t.
Individual polls can be misleading. It’s the trend of polls that matters. Occasional polls on Israel-Palestine were conducted by a small number of companies between 1946 and 1990. Over that 40-plus-year period, they tell us that: Australians were evenly divided on whether Palestine should be partitioned at all in the late 1940s; Australians supported Israel by a large majority in 1967 when it defeated Egypt and invaded and occupied the Palestinian territories; and Australians were pro-Israel in 1974, again by a large majority, following the 1973 war with Syria, Egypt and Jordan.
This support continued into the 1980s. A McNair Ingenuity poll in 1981 asked, “Are your sympathies … mainly with the Jewish people? OR mainly with the Arabic people? OR are they more or less equal?” (Results: Jewish people 28 per cent; Arab people 4 per cent; Equal 55 per cent; Don’t know 13 per cent.)
At least seven reputable polls have been conducted in the past decade touching on the question of Australian attitudes to Israel-Palestine.
In 2003, 35 per cent agreed ”with American policy on Israel and Palestine”, while 39 per cent disagreed.
In two polls in 2006, sympathy was almost evenly divided between the two sides, with two-thirds in one poll saying their sympathies were ”equal”.
But in 2007, after the Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon, 68 per cent had a negative view of Israel and, in 2009, after the war in Gaza, 24 per cent sympathised with Israel, 28 per cent with the Palestinians and 26 per cent with neither.
In 2010, 55 per cent described the conflict as ”Palestinians trying to end Israel’s occupation and form their [own] state”, while 32 per cent preferred ”Israelis fighting for security against Palestinian terrorism”.
And last year, while sympathies were almost evenly divided, 63 per cent were against settlers building on occupied land and 51 per cent thought Australia should vote ”Yes” for Palestinian statehood at the UN, compared to 15 per cent ”No” and 20 per cent ”Abstain”.
I am listing here only polls from private polling companies with established reputations in the specialist field.
The overwhelming trend shows a sharp swing since the 1980s against Israel’s image and actions among ordinary Australians.
The fact of the current disjunction between government policy and public attitudes on the Israel-Palestine issue receives almost no publicity, unlike polls on Afghanistan. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to hide.
The Gillard government stood against Australian public opinion, against the former Labor foreign minister from the Hawke government, against its own foreign minister’s plea to at least “abstain”, against the arguments of that conservative bastion of opinion The Economist, and against most of the world, but with the US and Israel in voting “no” to Palestine’s entry into the UN.
This snubbing of public opinion cannot last. Once upon a time, before the emergence of the Greens, progressive voters had nowhere else to go. Now they do. If Labor wishes to renew itself, it might start by listening to the views of its voters. And they are increasingly tolling the bell on Palestine.

POLLS:
1. Pollster: Roy Morgan Research. June, 2003.
Question: “Do you agree or disagree with American policy on Israel and Palestine?”
Results: Agree 35%, Disagree 39%, Don’t Know 26%.
2. Pollster: UMR Research for Hawker Britton consultants. March, 2006.
Question: “Generally, do you feel more sympathy towards the Israelis or the Palestinians?”
Results: Israelis 24%, Palestinians 23%, Neither/Both 33%, Unsure 20%.
3. Pollster: McNair Ingenuity Research. September, 2006.
Question: “What about you personally – are your sympathies – mainly with the Jewish people? OR mainly with the Arabic people? OR are they more or less equal?”
Results: Jewish people 13%, Arab people 10%, Equal 67%, Don’t know 10%.
4. Pollster: GlobeScan and PIPA Centre at University Of Maryland for BBC World Service. March, 2007.
Question concerns influences of various countries on the world.
Results: “Israel is viewed quite negatively in the world, possibly because the poll was conducted less than six months following the Israel/Hezbollah war in Lebanon… Large majorities also have negative views in Europe, including Germany (77%), Greece (68%) and France (66%). Indonesia (71%), Australia (68%) and South Korea (62%) are the most negative countries in the Asia/Pacific region. Brazilians (72%) are the most negative in Latin America”.
5. Pollster: Roy Morgan Research. May, 2009.
Question i: “Overall, do your sympathies lie more with the Israelis or the Palestinians?”
Results: Israelis 24%, Palestinians 28%, Neither 26%, Can’t say 22%.
Question ii: “In late December 2008, Israel launched a military campaign in the Gaza Strip, which lasted three and a half weeks. Israel’s stated aim was to stop Hamas’ or the Palestinians’ rocket attacks on Israel, and to stop arms being smuggled into Gaza via tunnels. Hamas and the Palestinians stated that the tunnels were only used to deliver food and medicines to the Gaza strip residents because the Israelis had failed to lift their blockade of the Gaza Strip. Before today, were you aware of that situation?”
Results: Yes 57%, No 42%, Can’t say 1%.
Question iii: “In your opinion, was Israel’s recent military action in the Gaza Strip justified or was it not justified?”
Results: Justified 28%, Not justified 42%, Can’t say 29%.
6. Pollster: Research Now, Griffith University. May, 2010.
Question ii: Which of the following best describes the Israel-Palestine conflict?
Results: Palestinians trying to end Israel’s occupation and form their state (55%), Israelis fighting for security against Palestinian terrorism (32%), Both Palestinian self-determination and Israeli self-defence (4%), Other (9%).
Question vi: To what extent do you agree Israel should withdraw from the settlements it has constructed on Palestinian land?
Results: Strongly agree 24%, Agree 53%, Disagree 18%, Strongly disagree 5%.
7. Pollster: Roy Morgan Research. November, 2011.
Question i: “Overall, do your sympathies lie more with the Israelis or the Palestinians?’’
Results: Israelis 26%, Palestinians 27%, Neither 21%, Can’t say 26%.
Question ii: ‘‘Israeli settlers have been building homes on occupied Palestinian land for many years. Would you say you support this activity?’’
Results: Yes 17%, No 63%, Can’t say 20%.
Question iii: “In September 2011, Palestine applied for full membership of the United Nations. This request is now being considered by the United Nations but Israel and the USA are opposed to it. In your opinion, should the United Nations recognize Palestine as one of its member States?”
Results: Yes 61%, No 22%, Can’t say 18%.
Question iv: “In order for Palestine to be recognized as a full member State of the United Nations, existing member Nations must enter a vote of ‘yes’, ‘no’, or they can ‘abstain’ from voting. In your opinion, how should Australia vote?’’
Results: Vote yes 51%, Vote no 15%, Abstain 20%, Can’t say 14%.

Peter Manning is a journalist, academic and author of Us and Them: Media, Muslims and the Middle East (Random House, 2006). This article first appeared on the SMH 13/02/2012

To depict the individual whose activities symbolized the most significant events of 2011, Time magazine featured a protester.

That protester was for democracy and against authoritarian rule throughout the Middle East. He or she was also a member of the Occupy Movement, campaigning against corporate greed, the excesses of big banks, governments’ collusion in propping up such institutions and rewarding those, mostly invisible, executives who continued to think they were entitled to huge financial spoils, even if a country’s economic system crashed, even if unemployment and poverty increased and people lost their homes.

Around the world and in particular in the USA, the Occupy Movement continues to protest the clash between corporate power and those – the protesters’ placards say ‘We are the 99%’ – for whom financial chicanery is invisible but who have suffered the consequences of a greedy market based, free for all. In America, along with proposals to Occupy Congress, a general strike is planned for May 1st.

Although principled and gutsy activists have occupied financial centres in Sydney and Melbourne, there’s a tendency to think that injustices which motivate protesters across America and Europe do not have much relevance for the lucky country. As long as China needs Australia’s raw materials, our economy will sail along, the disparity between rich and poor will not be too obvious, corporate excesses not too prevalent and if they are, it must be because amazing CEO’s and associated Company directors deserve their rewards. In the middle of a beach bound summer, the Occupy Movement is not worth thinking about.

However, a front page story in last week’s Sydney Morning Herald story shows why we’d all benefit if we encouraged the protests of the Occupy Movement. Under Freedom of Information, journalist Phillip Dorling reported that the former NSW Premier Nick Greiner sits as chairman of numerous boards including the manufacturer Bradken, the companies QBE Insurance and Blue Star Print. From the former company he receives $262,580 and as current chairman of infrastructure NSW for the O’Farrell’s Government the Premier’s Office claims his is salary $71,000, but will not divulge any the other benefits.

On top of such an accumulation of salaries, fees and other perks, the same former Premier claimed $1.83 million in expenses over the last three years of which $588.532 was in the last financial year.

To avoid appearing to scapegoat Nick Greiner, it’s fair to mention that other former NSW Premiers, Bob Carr and Neville Wran also claimed generous expenses and the same Herald article reminds us that ex Premiers who have served more than four years do have approved entitlements: a car, a full time driver, two full time staff, an office, a gold life pass for rail travel throughout Australia, free travel on State Transit for life, twelve first class return flights within Australia and twelve return flights within the State., They are also entitled to a home phone and free postage.

I’ll no doubt hear that any such criticism is not justified given the obscene rewards paid to company chiefs or to ex politicians in the United States. It will be said that our ex leaders have approved entitlements, can use their experience in the corporate world and are not over remunerated. From the point of view of people who’ve lost jobs, savings and homes, or who can’t find a place which they could afford to rent, that statement would sound offensive. How much financial reward does any one person need ? What does it take to be satisfied ? How much is to enough ?

A significant feature of the Occupy Movement has been its questioning of the notion that corporate executives – not just the chiefs of banks – have an expertise which is beyond the skills or ken of ordinary citizens who should therefore be grateful to such individuals for having created ‘wealth’.

This question about alleged corporate – including ex politicians’ – skills, knowledge and entitlement to massive financial remuneration needs to be de-mystified. Let’s stop fooling ourselves. Sitting as Chair or Director on a board can merely mean maintaining a privileged culture of insider game playing – rubber stamping decisions, thinking uncritically to vote en bloc for absurd salaries, plus appearing well dressed and united to keep any critics at bay at annual general meetings. I’ve been to enough corporate conferences to realize that with exceptions – usually those who are capable of a touch of humour and humility – too many leaders have been deluding themselves into thinking they’re so special they should even be rewarded for being a failure.

If you think that commentary reads like an unsubstantiated claim generated typically by any critic who can so easily be dubbed ‘from the left’, let’s consider the judgments of analysts who have studied at great length this philosophy of take what you can. Incidentally, participants in the Occupy Movement in Ireland say, ‘It’s not about left and right. It’s about right and wrong.’

In several books, including One Market Under God (2000) and last year’s Pity the Billionaire, author Thomas Frank identifies the divisive trend to bury Enlightenment values, such as fairness and altruism and to scoff at any policy which encourages the ideal of benefits being shared equally. The sub title of his Pity the Billionaire study is ‘The Hard Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right’. In that work, Frank examines the false claims, the greed and manipulation of bankers, dealers, accountants and speculators plus politicians’ collusion with such behaviour. He shows how such a culture has produced a ‘market based civilization’. About such a civilization, Frank concluded, ‘If ever a financial order deserved a 30s –style repudiation, this one did. Its gods were false. Its taste was bad. Its heroes were oafs and brutes and thieves and bullies. And all of them failed, even on their own stunted terms.’

In the optimistic early sixties in London I was taught that in any sector of society, economic and social policies should be about ‘the dominance of altruism over egoism.’ Such vision and values bolstered much of post war policies in the UK, across Europe, in Australia and New Zealand and contributed significantly to the building of civil societies. In author Will Hutton’s terms, that drive for social betterment became the cornerstone of such societies.

The Occupy Movement has challenged those selfish and ultimately self defeating values which are building the ‘market based civilization.’ Alternative values embrace the ideals of a common humanity and in 2012, Australians could re-invigorate those ideals by contributing to the goals of the Occupy Movement. If they do, then at least one part of the potential of Time magazine’s protester will be realized.

Emeritus Professor Stuart Rees is Director of the Sydney Peace Foundation.

Article first appeared in On Line Opinion, 20/01/2012

In West Papua, it’s appeasement, violence and business as usual for Indonesia. There is a vast difference between promises made to the people of West Papua and what actually happens.

President Yudhoyono once pledged to solve the Papuan issue in a ”dignified, just and peaceful” manner.

During 2011 he made similar guarantees to heads of state such as President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Yet violence remains entrenched in the province and is worsening. Rather than drawing down its military in the region, Jakarta is now increasing its estimated 30,000-strong presence. In mid-December, defence spokesman Colonel Sigit Priyono announced the deployment of troops now in Java, Aceh and Kalimantan.

Response to the conflict from foreign governments including Australia, the country nearest to West Papua with the exception of PNG, is to remain silent, echoing the 1999 reaction to the violence spreading in East Timor.

With operations currently centred in the highland area of Paniai, security forces are killing West Papuans accused of ”separatism”. On December 12, police attacked a site in Eduda, believed to be the headquarters of a local cell of the OPM (Independent Papua Organisation) and 14 were killed.

Human rights monitors report a ”military siege involving horrendous destruction and violence”, including torching of villages and chapels, deaths and forced evacuations.

Last week soldiers on a ”routine patrol” shot dead a suspected OPM member, Lindiron Tabuni, the son of Goliat Tabuni, leader of Puncak Jaya district’s OPM group.

Clearly, lethal force is used as the first resort against West Papuans, branded as ”treasonous” and ”terrorists”. Indonesian authority is viewed by West Papuans as repressive and neo-colonial, lacking in concern for their welfare.

Lindiron Tabuni’s targeted killing is significant as he is from a large clan scattered in small subsistence farming hamlets. The Tabuni clan’s bow-and-arrow resistance to the modern, well-armed Indonesian security apparatus, regarded as brutal invaders, enjoys support. Tabuni’s death will likely invite a response that will lead to further retaliation.

The shootout is the latest incident of violence in a bloody start to the year, despite a promise from the President to church leaders on December 16 that he would ”command the chief of police and the armed forces (TNI) to stop the violence in Paniai”.

Indonesia’s pledges appease foreign governments who are compelled to stand up for human rights, but who are also pursuing their own national and commercial interests.

Jayapura chief of police Imam Setiawan typified a mindset when he referred to peaceful advocates of independence: ”Whoever supports separatism or subversion activity . . . I’m ready to die and finish them,” he said. ”This is my duty.”

Djoko Suyanto, Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs, has supported the use of force. Defence commission chairman Mahfudz Siddiq said, following a peaceful protest rally in the capital, Jayapura, in October at which six were murdered, that security forces ”should have been firmer”.

After 50 years of Indonesian rule, clearly the status quo is not working.

There is a responsibility on the part of the international community to try to protect non-combatants in this undeclared war between Indonesia and the people it governs, given that it was the UN that ceded control of Papua to Indonesia following its annexation in the 1960s.

If Jakarta felt serious about peace and resolution of the conflict, it would end the ”security approach” to West Papuan grievances.

The province remains Indonesia’s only designated ”zone of military operations”. This seems a contradiction. The region is proudly promoted as a province important to Indonesia’s ”territorial integrity”, where the citizenry voted to integrate with Indonesia in 1969 and are delighted with the arrangement.

The fact that the 1969 vote was a coerced, stage-managed farce orchestrated by a mass-murderer is conveniently glossed over by diplomats. There has been discontent ever since.

General Suharto and his successors built fortunes from West Papuan rainforest timber concessions and mineral resource wealth, operating a network of enterprises of no benefit to the local population. The security forces justify their presence, and benefit financially, from a continuation of hostilities.

Our Melanesian friends of the critical Pacific War years were quickly forgotten when General MacArthur and the Allied forces left their headquarters in Hollandia (Jayapura). Their post-colonial plight remains a stain on the national and international collective conscience.

West Papuan political prisoners make up a disproportionate percentage of Indonesia’s jail population, some serving 10 to 15-year terms for possessing or raising the outlawed ”Morning Star” flag, bestowed by the departing Dutch in 1961 but banned under Suharto until today.

A history of neglect has seen West Papua fall behind on all human development indices. It has the country’s highest poverty and the lowest standards on all health indicators, the highest infant and maternal mortality rates and highest national HIV/AIDS infection rate found in the general community.

It has the lowest education standards as measured by school attendance, trained teachers, infrastructure and availability of resources.

While the conflict persists, advancement in wellbeing will continue to elude the bulk of the indigenous population. With limited or no access to development agencies, the people will stay poor and illiterate, dying from preventable illnesses. Mistrust, violence, intimidation and psychological abuse will continue, ad infinitum, as West Papuans are pushed further aside.

Realpolitik has determined their modern history to be a tragic one. West Papuans have to date only dreamed of, and prayed for, a better fate.

An international, third-party-facilitated dialogue is now imperative. It is the least they should be offered.

John Wing is a research fellow at the University of Sydney’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and author of the report Genocide in West Papua?

This article first appeared in The Age, 18/10/12

Salina, Kansas – Late last year, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) released a hair-raising report on the state of the world’s soil and water resources. The bottomline: 25 per cent of the world’s food-producing soils are highly degraded or are rapidly being degraded. Add to that other soils which they say are degrading “moderately”, and the area under threat amounts to one-third of the Earth’s endowment of cropland.

Loss of productive soil, FAO reported, is most severe in the Himalayan and Andean regions; semi-arid tropical regions of Africa and India; rice-growing lands of Southeast Asia and areas of intensive and industrialised farming in Western Europe, North America, eastern China, India, Brazil and New Zealand.

According to the most recent Global Land Degradation Assessment, 18 countries – nine of them in sub-Saharan Africa and four in Southeast Asia – now see more than half of their entire land area going downhill rapidly. Countries whose land is in the worst trouble are often, but not always, countries where large numbers of people live in poverty. In just 10 countries – India, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Thailand, Mexico, Philippines, Democratic Republic of Congo, Vietnam and Burma – more than 530 million people are feeling the impact of land degradation directly. Worldwide, 1.5bn people are feeling it.

We humans now grow two-and-a-half to three times as much food as we did in 1960 while cultivating only 12 per cent more land area. It’s an extraordinary achievement, but the cost has been high. Tilling, fertilising and irrigating year after year damages the soil’s native structure, and the water that runs off into streams or percolates into groundwater can be laced with dangerous quantities of nitrates, pesticides or other pollutants.

The fate of the Earth’s agricultural lands is closely tied to the fate of its waters. Expansion of irrigation has been the biggest factor in increasing food production over the past half-century, and improving irrigation will be a key to boosting yields between now and 2050. But irrigation can deplete local water resources and disrupt the soil’s chemical balance. Furthermore, flooding of reservoirs has already driven tens of millions of people off of perfectly good forest and cropland around the world.

Back to traditional methods

While declining soil health is a global problem, many of the soils in critical condition are in the global South. Tropical soils are especially vulnerable, and when they’re farmed, all kinds of problems can be expected: loss of essential nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and micronutrients; washing away of already-thin topsoil; carbon depletion; crippling of the soil’s ability to store water; buildup of salts and aluminum toxicity; acidification and perhaps most importantly, destruction of the many species of microorganisms needed for a robust soil ecosystem.

When that has happened, farmers have still managed to produce harvests by pouring on synthetic fertilisers (if they can afford them.) Instead of restoring the soil, that renders it a more-or-less inert growth medium.

The cost of producing sufficient food between now and 2050, while retaining soil’s productive capacity on the global scale, was estimated by FAO at US $1tn for irrigation improvements plus $160bn for soil conservation. Governments of the global North could easily pay for that; such sums are not huge at all when viewed alongside the North’s expenditures on, say, armaments or corporate bailouts. But the cheque’s decidedly not in the mail.

And many farmers are not waiting to see that cheque before pushing back against erosion and loss of fertility. Using resources at hand, they’ve built terraces; planted rows of trees and shrubs; built water-breaks with crop residues or brush; interplanted nitrogen-fixing legume crops with cereals, root crops or perennial forage grasses; returned manure or nitrogen-rich leaves and stems to the soil and built field-scale rainwater-harvesting systems.

Researchers who’ve been working for years to improve food production on tropical soils say it will take more than cash to reverse the damage, and that what farm communities lack in the form of money and labour power they can make up for with “social capital” – their capacity to act collectively to protect their common life-support system, the soil.

Given sufficient social capital, communities have taken on even more ambitious soil-conserving projects that bring long-lived, deep-rooted trees and shrubs into agricultural plots – a group of techniques known as agroforestry. Examples can be seen on every continent.

Soil-friendly systems

Farmers are interplanting rows of fodder-producing trees and food crops in Africa’s Sahel region; incorporating nitrogen-fixing leguminous trees into crop and grazing lands in Asia and Latin America; popularising a broad array of agroecological techniques through the “campesino-to-campesino” method in Nicaragua and Cuba and establishing “home garden” plots in South Asia that contain a wide diversity of food-producing trees along with traditional crops. (In Bangladesh, where 90 per cent of natural forest cover has been stripped away, more than 20 million home gardens are bringing at least some trees back to the landscape.)

Modern, industrialised farming methods do not allow the soil to naturally replenish in between harvests. Still, such practices will have to proliferate rapidly if they are to make a difference in holding back soil degradation at the global scale. And room for expansion is limited; farmers are often reluctant to have trees taking up space on the often small plots of land where they must grow all of their staple crops.

And no matter how soil-friendly the cropping system, each year’s harvest pulls essential nutrients off the land. Even back in the nineteenth century, it was becoming clear that the way food systems worked – harvesting food grains rich in essential elements, carting them away to villages and cities and then failing to return human and animal wastes to the land – could not be sustained indefinitely. The soil would gradually be depleted of nutrients, and crop yields would drop.

Justus von Liebeg, who first figured out the chemistry of soil fertility, referred to such removal of nutrients through crop harvest as “robbery”. Karl Marx viewed it as a stark example of the “metabolic rift” between humans and nature that had come with industrialisation and urbanisation.

One effort to heal that rift is being carried out in Haiti, home to some of the most badly deforested and degraded soils on Earth. An organisation known as SOIL (Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods) is building networks that connect growing numbers of community toilets (ones that segregate liquid and solid wastes) with eco-sanitary composting facilities and fertiliser production and distribution. SOIL now operates the largest waste-treatment operation of any kind in Haiti while helping restore the country’s ravaged farmland and increase food production.

Achieving ecological strength

Still, a big hindrance to creating agricultural systems that maintain or improve soil health is humanity’s dependence on weak-rooted annual plants for most of our food. Given that dependence, the strategies of nutrient recycling, agroforestry and agroecology will not be sufficient. Therefore, groups of plant breeders in several countries are working to develop soil-conserving perennial cereal and grain-legume crops.

That work will take time, so “semi-perennial” systems are being pursued as interim measures. For example, a wide array of bean and pea species are typically treated as single-season crops in the tropics, but they can also be maintained for several years as nitrogen-fixing perennial shrubs or vines. In trials on hundreds of farms across the nation of Malawi over the past dozen years, a shrubby edible legume called pigeon pea and a viny one, velvet bean, have been intercropped with maize as multi-year semi-perennials. The intercropped plots were superior in maintaining soil fertility and stabilising food production while providing a combination of high-energy maize and high-protein legume grain.

Intercropping, tree-planting, managing water and restoring nutrients to the land are all efforts to recover ecological benefits that were lost when natural landscapes (mostly mixtures of perennial species) were converted into croplands growing chiefly annual monocultures. But it’s not just this component or that characteristic of a natural ecosystem that makes it erosion-proof, watertight and frugal with nutrients. Natural ecosystems came to be that way over evolutionary time thanks to vast networks of interdependent microbes, plants, animals and mineral substances.

Simply adjusting the way soils are farmed can slow soil loss, but it cannot achieve that kind of ecological strength – just as installation of new, efficient air-conditioning in a thousand-square-metre mansion may save some energy, but can’t make the house “green”. If we are to have a global soil base that can sustain human civilisation over the long term, we will have to create entirely new ways of farming that emulate natural ecosystems to achieve their degree of resilience.

A ‘global priority’

That transformation will become especially important as the world’s farming communities, especially those in the tropics, face the unpredictable risks that will come with greenhouse warming. But in tackling climate disruption, it will also be essential not to conflate those looming risks with agriculture’s widely promoted potential for burying carbon safely in the soil.

In particular, we must not take the quest for soil-conserving food production and reduce it to a matter of “carbon farming” to produce emissions credits. Certainly, the practices for curbing soil degradation outlined above can, to varying degrees, keep carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. But the world needs to spend whatever is required to get all of those measures in place anyway, for the sake of the landscapes where the food is grown and the communities who grow it. Soil-saving by some should not provide others with a licence to pollute.

To value everything in terms of carbon and treat the myriad benefits of ecologically sound agriculture as mere byproducts of climate protection is to invite all kinds of threats to soil and food. Perhaps the most menacing threats are those posed by connecting food and soil more tightly to global capital markets through carbon-trading schemes and tying them more closely to volatile energy markets by putting already fragile soils to work growing biofuels.

In countries with ample land, it should be possible for farmers to produce just enough biofuel to fill the needs of agriculture, and it makes thoroughly good sense to have farming become energy self-sufficient in that way. But to grow energy crops or strip plant residues from the soil in order to fill the fuel tanks of the world’s much larger non-farm transport systems would impose an impossible burden. There is not enough good soil on the whole planet to satisfy humanity’s vast and growing car-and-cargo cult.

As fossil fuels become more deeply depleted and (perhaps) their use becomes more restricted, we will become more and more dependent once again on soil, water and sunshine for our lives and livelihoods. And we should be ready for the more modest way of life they are able to provide.

We still have the means and the ability to ensure that as the decades pass, there will still be enough good soils and good farmers to keep civilisation going. But if that’s to happen, healthy soils and intact ecosystems must be shifted into the top tier of global priorities, and fast.

Stan Cox is research coordinator at The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, USA. His most recent book is Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World

The article first appeared on Al Jazeera Online

On the first Monday of the new year, on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald, former Prime Minister John Howard was pictured below a heading which said that he had been ‘honoured for Queen and Country.’ Such a tribute – he had been made a member of the British Crown’s Order of Merit – belies the man’s record.

Even if we were to ignore Howard’s leadership over issues such as his hostility towards the Australian prisoners in Guantanamo, Australia’s inclusion in the war in Iraq, plus the Howard government’s cruel treatment of asylum seekers and refugees, I wonder what the Queen had in mind when she rewarded this man.

Her Majesty is no doubt aware that Howard is a devout monarchist and perhaps she still feels sorry for him that he lost his seat in Bennelong and was ignominiously kicked out of parliament. But even the clear terms of reference of the award make you wonder how on earth John Howard crept in. The terms refer to a subject of the Crown who has rendered exceptionally meritorious service ‘towards the advancement of the Arts, Learning, Literature, and Science or such other exceptional service as We are fit to recognize.’

The reference to ‘literature’ might be about John Howard’s autobiography but even those pages of self justification are part of the hypocrisy which sees one set of criteria for judging the rich and powerful versus indifference and even cruelty towards people whom establishment sources would regard a of little significance. John Howard eventually did a deal with Vice President Dick Cheney to produce trumped up charges against Guantanamo prisoner David Hicks so that – for Howard’s election purposes – the young Australian could be convicted and then brought home, albeit straight to a Federal prison. But he had languished in Guantanamo for almost six years and Howard had colluded with Donald Rumsfeld and others in regarding Hicks as one of the worst of the worst even tho’ there’s still no evidence that he harmed let alone killed anyone. Subsequently, under the ‘principle’ of one law for us, another for them – Hicks is not allowed to sell his book, not allowed to profit from his story about Guantanamo.

I mention David Hicks because this introduces discussion of John Howard’s alliance with his US friends in America’s war on terror, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. John Howard’s foreign policy record was mediocre in several respects. His love for America and the British monarchy was coupled to his disinterest in Australia’s place in South East Asia. To ingratiate himself to his big neighbor Indonesia he was indifferent to the plight of West Papuans and the Australian Government’s eventual rescue mission in East Timor was followed by a characteristically selfish ‘ the powerful takes most’ division of oil resources in relation to that impoverished country.

But it’s Howard’s enthusiasm for and justification of the war in Iraq which makes his Order of Merit sound like an act from a Gilbert and Sullivan light opera which would be funny if it was not so deadly serious.

After nearly nine years America declared an end to the war and withdrew its last troops in December 2011. In that war, John Howard, once described by President George W. Bush as a man of steel, was also regarded as the US’s staunchest ally. Under his leadership and however small Australia’s contribution, this country was seen by the Bush White House as always there, always ready to go the extra mile. This extra included the lies, the financial costs and the monumental loss of life in one of history’s most disastrous foreign policy escapades.

When deliberations about the award to former Prime Minister Howard were being considered, was there no recall that this war was illegal, immoral and initiated under completely false pretences ? There never was any link between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, never any weapons of mass destruction left in Iraq. The invasion of that country started, not with any authorization from the UN Security Council but with the much advertised shock and awe bombing of Baghdad.

That bombing of Baghdad, so proudly reported by the mainstream media outlets in countries forming the Coalition of the Willing, -USA, UK and Australia- was the beginning of a carnage in which Australia colluded. Almost 5,000 American soldiers were killed and more than 32, 000 seriously wounded. The Pentagon admits that 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives but by several other accounts, over one million Iraqi civilians died in this war. Over five million Iraqis were displaced from their homes and approximately four million became refugees. The long term financial and human costs of running an illegal war do not include the devastation to a fragile environment.

Under the principles enunciated in the Nuremberg tribunals which followed the end of the Second World War , an illegal war was defined as an atrocity which represented a ‘crime against peace’. Under that principle the architects of the Iraq war such as former President Bush, and former Prime Ministers Blair and Howard should be in the dock of the International Criminal Court charged with crimes again humanity. They’d each be presumed innocent and entitled to a transparent due process of international law, a right never afforded to David Hicks let alone to the thousands of Iraqi civilians, including many women and children murdered on suspicion of being terrorists or for allegedly aiding enemy insurgents.

John Howard did introduce stricter gun control laws in Australia and that initiative could be regarded as rendering ‘extremely meritorious service.’ But in so many other respects and my focus on the Iraq war is only one example, the electors of Bennelong not the Queen’s advisors have made the most sound judgment of the man’s record.

Instead of producing out of date honours for those whose merits have been created by a distorted version of history, it would be a better start to a new year to think just a little – don’t let’s overdo it – about the notion of a common humanity. Alongside the laudatory remarks about brave war leader John Howard we should perhaps recall Ali Ismail Abbas, a 12 year old Iraqi boy who lost both of his arms, his father, his pregnant mother, his brother and thirteen other members of his family in the Iraq war. A poem about Ali says that smart bombs killed his dreams but it wasn’t their fault as they did not know who he was. By contrast the Sydney Morning Herald’s picture reminds us who John Howard is and the invisible Buckingham Palace pundits overlooked his cruel record and have given him an honour he does not deserve.

This article first appeared in Online Opinion on January 4, 2012

Prof Stuart Rees is the Director of the Sydney Peace Foundation.

Prague, Czech Republic – Long before Czechoslovakia’s communist regime collapsed in 1989, Václav Havel was one of the most remarkable figures in Czech history – already a successful playwright when he became the unofficial leader of the opposition movement. Though he hoped to return to writing, the revolution catapulted him to the presidency of Czechoslovakia, and, after the country split in 1993, he was elected President of the new Czech Republic, serving until 2003.

A political career rooted in historical coincidence made Havel an unusual politician. Not only did he bring to post-1989 politics a certain distrust of political parties; as a former dissident, he considered it essential to emphasise the moral dimension of politics – a stance that steered him onto a collision course with the pragmatists and technologists of power, whose main representative, Václav Klaus, succeeded him as president.

Havel’s public life could be divided into three distinct periods: artist (1956-1969), dissident (1969-1989), and politician (1989-2003) – except that he always combined all three sensibilities in his public activities. As a promising playwright in the 1960s, he was certainly very “political”, focusing on the absurdity of the regime. He was also one of the most vocal critics of censorship and other human-rights violations, which made him a dissident even during the liberal “Prague Spring” of 1968.

Havel was blacklisted and openly persecuted after the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in August of that year, but he continued to write anti-totalitarian plays. In 1977, he and more than 200 other dissidents founded the human-rights movement Charter 77, which quickly established itself as a leading opposition force. Havel was one of the movement’s first three spokesmen.

The following year, he wrote a seminal essay, “The Power of the Powerless”, in which he described Czechoslovakia’s post-1968 “normalisation” regime as a morally bankrupt system based on all-pervasive lying. In 1979, he was sentenced to a five-year prison term for his activities in the Committee of the Unjustly Prosecuted, an offshoot of Charter 77 that monitored human-rights abuses and persecution in Czechoslovakia. He was released near the end of his term after contracting pneumonia (a source of serious health problems for the rest of his life). His Letters to Olga, philosophical essays written from prison and addressed to his wife, quickly became a classic of anti-totalitarian literature.

As President of Czechoslovakia, Havel continued to combine his political, dissident and artistic sensibilities. He insisted on writing his own speeches, conceiving many of them as philosophical and literary works, in which he not only criticised the dehumanised technology of modern politics, but also repeatedly appealed to Czechs not to fall prey to consumerism and mindless party politics.

His was a conception of democracy based on a strong civil society and morality. That distinguished him from Klaus, the other leading figure of the post-communist transformation, who advocated a quick transition, stripped, if possible, of inconvenient moral scruples and impediments posed by the rule of law. Their conflict came to a head in 1997, when the Klaus-led government fell after a series of scandals. Havel described the economic system created by Klaus’s post-communist reforms as “mafioso capitalism”.

Although Klaus never returned as prime minister, his “pragmatic” approach gained the upper hand in Czech politics, especially after Havel’s departure from presidency in 2003. Indeed, Havel’s greatest defeat may be that most Czechs now view their country as a place where political parties serve as agents of powerful economic groups (many of them created by the often-corrupt privatisation process overseen by Klaus).

In the last years of his presidency, Havel’s political opponents ridiculed him as a naïve moralist. Many ordinary Czechs, on the other hand, had come to dislike him not only for what seemed like relentless moralising, but also because he reflected back to them their own lack of courage during the communist regime. While he continued to enjoy respect and admiration abroad, if only for continuing his fight against human-right abuses around the world, his popularity at home was shaken.

“[Havel] was one of the last of a now-extinct breed of politicians who could lead effectively in extraordinary times.”

But not anymore. Czechs, given their growing dissatisfaction with the current political system’s omnipresent corruption and other failings, have increasingly come to appreciate the importance of Havel’s moral appeals. In fact, now, after his death, he is well on the way to being lionised as someone who foresaw many current problems, and not only at home: While still President, he repeatedly called attention to the self-destructive forces of industrial civilisation and global capitalism.

Many will ask what made Havel exceptional. The answer is simple: decency. He was a decent, principled man. He did not fight against communism because of some hidden personal agenda, but simply because it was, in his view, an indecent, immoral system. When, as president, he supported the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 or the coming invasion of Iraq in 2003, he did not talk about geo-political or strategic objectives but about the need to stop human-rights abuses by brutal dictators.

Acting on such beliefs in his political career made him a politician of the kind that the contemporary world no longer sees. Perhaps that is why, as the world – and Europe in particular – faces a period of profound crisis, the clarity and courageous language that would bring about meaningful change is missing.

The death of Havel, a great believer in European integration, is thus highly symbolic: He was one of the last of a now-extinct breed of politicians who could lead effectively in extraordinary times, because their first commitment was to common decency and the common good, not to holding power. If the world is to make it through its various crises successfully, his legacy must remain alive.

Jirí Pehe was Vaclav Havel’s political adviser from September 1997 to May 1999. He is currently Director of New York University in Prague.

This article appeared on Al Jazeera Online

The letter and petition can be found here

The Hon Kevin Rudd
Minister for Foreign Affairs
Parliament House ACT 2600

Dear Minister

We write to express our concern about the plight of Julian Assange.
To date, no charges have been laid against Mr Assange by Swedish authorities. Nonetheless, we understand that should he be sent to Sweden, he will be held on remand, incommunicado. We note your comments last year about the need for Mr Assange to receive appropriate consular support. We trust that this consular support is being provided and will continue.

We are concerned that should Mr Assange be placed in Swedish custody, he will be subject to the process of “temporary surrender”, enabling his removal to the United States without the appropriate legal processes that accompany normal extradition cases. We urge you to convey to the Swedish government Australia’s expectation that Mr Assange will be provided with the same rights of appeal and review that any standard extradition request would entail.

Any prosecution of Mr Assange in the United States will be on the basis of his activities as a journalist and editor (Mr Assange’s status as such has been recently confirmed by the High Court in England). Such a prosecution will be a serious assault on freedom of speech and the need for an unfettered, independent media.

Further, the chances of Mr Assange receiving a fair trial in the United States appear remote. A number of prominent political figures have called for him to be assassinated, and the Vice-President has called him a “high-tech terrorist”. Given the atmosphere of hostility in relation to Mr Assange, we hold serious concerns about his safety once in US custody. We note that Mr Assange is an Australian citizen, whose journalistic activities were undertaken entirely outside of US territory.

Mr Assange is entitled to the best endeavours of his government to ensure he is treated fairly. He is entitled to expect that his government will not remain silent while his liberty and safety are placed at risk by a government embarrassed by his journalism. Australians also expect that their government will speak out against efforts to silence the media and intimidate those who wish to hold governments to account.

We ask that you convey clearly to the United States government Australia’s concerns about any effort to manufacture charges against Mr Assange, or to use an unrelated criminal investigation as the basis for what may effectively be rendition. We also urge the government to publicly affirm that Mr Assange is welcome to return to Australia once proceedings against him in Sweden are concluded, and that the government will fully protect his rights as an Australian citizen once here.

We have copied this letter to your colleague, the Attorney-General.
Yours sincerely

Phillip Adams AO
Adam Bandt MP
Wendy Bacon
Greg Barns
Susan Benn
Senator Bob Brown
Dr Scott Burchill
Julian Burnside QC
Dr Leslie Cannold
Mike Carlton
Professor Noam Chomsky
David Collins
Lieutenant Colonel (ret) Lance Collins, Australian Intelligence Corps
Eva Cox
Sophie Cunningham
Roy David
Andrew Denton
Senator Richard Di Natale
Peter Fitzsimons
Rt Hon Malcolm Fraser AC CH
Anna Funder
Professor Raimond Gaita
David Gilmour and Polly Samson
Kara Greiner
Senator Sarah Hanson-Young
Liz Humphrys
Professor Sarah Joseph
Bernard Keane
Professor John Keane
Stephen Keim SC
Steve Killelea
Andrew Knight
Mary Kostakidis
Professor Theo van Leeuwen
Ken Loach
Antony Loewenstein
Senator Scott Ludlam
Associate Professor Jake Lynch
Professor Robert Manne
Dr Ken Macnab
David Lyle
Alex Miller
Senator Christine Milne
Alex Mitchell
Reg Mombassa
Gordon Morris
Jane Morris
Julian Morrow
The Hon Alastair Nicholson AO RFD QC
Nicolé Nolan
Rebecca O’Brien
Elizabeth O’Shea
Michael Pearce SC
John Pilger
Justin Randle
Senator Lee Rhiannon
Guy Rundle
Angus Sampson
Senator Rachel Siewert
Marius Smith
Jeff Sparrow
Professor Stuart Rees AM
Rob Stary
Stephen Thompson
Dr Tad Tietze
Mike Unger
Dale Vince
Brian Walters SC
Rachel Ward
Senator Larissa Waters
Tracy Worcester, Marchioness of Worcester
Senator Penny Wright
Spencer Zifcak

He will then be extradited to a third country, not to face criminal charges but merely for questioning about allegations of sexual assault which under Australian law would not likely result in any criminal charges.

There he will be held on remand and incommunicado. In this state of ”temporary surrender” he will be liable to further extradition to a fourth country, believed to have already instituted legal process relating to activities unconnected with the allegations of sexual assault.

The accused man’s prospects of a fair trial in that fourth country are negligible. Its Vice-President has labelled him a ”high-tech terrorist”.

The current front-runner to challenge the incumbent President in next year’s election has branded him an ”enemy combatant” who should be murdered or subject to ”extraordinary rendition” – that is, hunted down, kidnapped and sent to a secret torture centre beyond the reach of that country’s laws.

At home in Australia, the official response has been less extreme but still hostile.

The Prime Minister and the former attorney-general both publicly alleged that he had broken the law, but have been unable to tell us which law.

They have refused to retract this allegation even in the face of advice from the Australian Federal Police that no offence under Australian law has been committed.

Ignoring personal pleas from the accused man and his mother, the Australian government has refused to intervene, on his behalf, with the foreign governments pursuing him, despite friendly relations with those governments.

The activities for which the accused man has been condemned before trial, or even the laying of any charges, have earned him the Sydney Peace Prize, the Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism in Australia, the Martha Gelhorn Prize for Journalism, in the US, and Liberty Victoria’s Voltaire Award for Free Speech. The readers of both Time and Le Monde voted him person of the year for 2010.

Contrary to dire predictions that the accused man’s activities would imperil the safety of nations and individuals, no such consequences have been reported. All he really did was help shine a light into the dark recesses of international relations, exposing the uncomfortable if unremarkable truth behind the outward expressions of diplomacy.

The accused man is, of course, Julian Assange, undoubtedly the most famous Australian in the world today. The price of that fame has been the Kafkaesque fate described above. It is easy to shrug and say this fate was inevitable, that he had it coming to him for daring, Prometheus-like, to take on forces far greater than himself. It is far harder to pause and question this complacent response.

Imagine instead that he was the citizen of a country not obsessed with security at the expense of liberty; a country mature and self-confident enough to distinguish its own interests from those of its allies; a country whose political leadership could tell politics from policies; a country not riven by culture wars and marred by character assassination; whose citizenry could take offence at obvious injustice to one of its own and do something about it.

Imagine that Assange was a citizen of that country and then ask yourself whether his fate was inevitable.

The Christians among us might care to pray for such a country this coming Christmas. The irreligious might hope that Santa delivers justice on Christmas Eve. But we all need to stop, between the turkey and the plum pudding, to reflect on Assange’s fate and what it says about us and our country. What responsibility do we as Australians bear? These are uncomfortable questions, likely to disturb our usual summer torpor. However, we need to ask them. Merry Christmas.

Michael Pearce, SC, is a Melbourne lawyer and former president of Liberty Victoria. He is a signatory, with dozens of others, to an open letter to Kevin Rudd about the plight of Julian Assange.

The letter and petition can be found here.

This article first appeared on The Age, December 19 2011

Sydney Peace Foundation, responsible for Australia’s only international award for peace, insists that the best way to enhance Australia’s security in the Asia Pacific century is to engage in energetic dialogue with Chinese representatives at all levels of government and non-government organizations.

By contrast, the proposal to increase the number of US ships, planes and marines in Australia’s far north is a repeat of centuries of short sighted assumptions that dialogue occurs only after conflict and that military force always provides stability and security.

Director of the Sydney Peace Foundation, Professor Stuart Rees says, ‘Instead of imagination to re-define what security means and how it can be realized, Australian citizens are told that China is the 21st century threat, hence the need to bolster the military alliance with the US.

Instead of foreshadowing enthusiastic engagement with China and with all other nations in the region, politicians from government and opposition cower behind the promise of more US forces on Australian soil and rub their hands at the prospect of extra income from US marines on leave in Darwin, even though trade with China dwarfs that with the USA.

Instead of hearing from commentators concerned with the links between peace and economic development, concerned to show how dialogue about human rights forges friendships, mainstream media mostly parrots the Kevin Rudd line ‘ I know best, the build up of arms is the way to security.’

We desperately need different values, different ways of thinking and writing: the language of a common humanity, of peace with justice. We do not need to be treated to the same old mantras of militarism that for centuries have resulted in the destruction of people and environments.’

‘We ask President Obama and Prime Minister Gillard, ‘When will you ever learn ?’ When will you realize that your militarism makes ‘Never Again’ sound so hollow !

All media enquires to:
Melissa McCullough
Media and Publicity | Sydney Peace Foundation
melissa.mccullough@sydney.edu.au | 0432 861 653

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