‘On 19 March 2003 President Bush Jnr commenced his criminal war against Iraq by ordering a so-called decapitation strike against the President of Iraq in violation of a 48-hour ultimatum he had given publicly to the Iraqi President and his sons to leave the country.  

This duplicitous behaviour violated the customary international laws of war set forth in the 1907 Hague Convention on the Opening of Hostilities to which the United States is still a contracting party, as evidenced by paragraphs 20, 21, 22, and 23 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956).  

‘For 2005, my annual task of reviewing the past year has been complicated by an old adage: oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. Here I sit, tangled in a web that many people began weaving way back when the Gipper was protecting us against deadly pollutants released by old-growth forests. It was a jumble out there this year — one that defies linear documentation.  

‘I'm sure there are many well-meaning Americans who agree with their president's explanation that it's all a necessary evil (and that patriotic citizens will not be spied on unless they dial up Osama bin Laden).  

But the nasty echoes of apartheid South Africa should at least give them pause. While Bush uses the rhetoric of "evildoers" and the "global war on terror," Pretoria talked of "total onslaught."  

‘Britain is to become the first country in the world where the movements of all vehicles on the roads are recorded. A new national surveillance system will hold the records for at least two years.  

Using a network of cameras that can automatically read every passing number plate, the plan is to build a huge database of vehicle movements so that the police and security services can analyse any journey a driver has made over several years.  

‘The debate regarding war and Militarization raises the broad issue of national sovereignty. 

I am particularly gratified as an economist to participate in this important event in the Nation’s capital, in Malaysia, a country which at a critical moment in its history, namely at the height of the 1997 Asian crisis, took the courageous stance of confronting the Washington Consensus and the international financial establishment.  

‘This Minority Report has been produced at the request of Representative John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee. He made this request in the wake of the President's failure to respond to a letter submitted by 122 Members of Congress and more than 500,000 Americans in July of this year asking him whether the assertions set forth in the Downing Street Minutes were accurate. Mr. Conyers asked staff, by year end 2005, to review the available information concerning possible misconduct by the Bush Administration in the run up to the Iraq War and post-invasion statements and actions, and to develop legal conclusions and make legislative and other recommendations to him.  

‘If America's leaders want to hunt terrorists while transforming dictatorships into democracies, they must recognize that torture, which includes CID, has historically been an instrument of oppression - not an instrument of investigation or of intelligence gathering. 

No country needs to invent how to "legalize" torture; the problem is rather how to stop it from happening. If it isn't stopped, torture will destroy your nation's important strategy to develop democracy in the Middle East.  

If you thought the devil was behind it, you’ve confused a couple blatant liars who strut when they walk! 

Bush did it!  

After well over three years of lying, prevaricating, misleading, and confusing the American people, after killing, maiming and destroying the livelihoods of tens of thousands of Iraqis and Americans at a healthy 20-to-1 ratio, and after the unprecedented destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure, let the record show, on December 14, 2005, Dubya said "I am responsible!"  

‘This is a story that implicates all of us. Torture, and fear of torture, are factors in holding costs down in our new-age globalized production system. Take just-in-time delivery, add a touch of submersion in shit, fear of beating, fear of drowning, and voilà! You get Wal-Mart’s everyday low prices. 

That’s not quite how the story gets conveyed in the business press, however. When American economists and executives opine about China, you don’t hear about the jailing and abuse of workers who seek decent living standards. There’s nothing new in this: Our guys in the oil business have never said word one about the repressive Saudi regime, and United Fruit was always the Latin American banana-republic dictator’s best friend.  

’Iraq, like Vietnam before it, has served to remind us that, like the war on communism, the war on terror is but a charade, a fear engendering escapade, designed to control populations and empower the elite, unleashing fear onto the citizenry while delivering enormous profit to the military-industrial complex. Using Arab men as bogeymen, hidden in the shadows, without faces, countries and, with the help of Hollywood and the corporate media, with a growing brutal reputation, dark skinned Muslims replaced white Soviet Reds as the new American enemy, the new cash cow granting the government and military industrial complex a new generation of destructive war from which to bleed the American taxpayer dry, providing misallocation of resources to the former and enormous profit to the latter.  

‘This special issue, published on-line and available to subscribers and non-subscribers, is a response to quite extraordinary and frightening measures and processes in Australian political life. In this issue we endeavor to bring you articles and comment by a wide range of writers on the Anti-Terrorism Bill (No. 2) 2005.  

As we write, a Senate Committee hears evidence on the impact of the Bill. Even this small amount of space for debate represents a victory over the Howard Government’s ominous attempts to close down opportunities for political comment and opposition.  

‘Nobody but Americans celebrate Thanksgiving.  

It is reserved by history and the intent of “the founders

On Monday of this week, Lateline’s Tony Jones hosted a report by journalist Tom Iggulden called Homegrown Terror Attack Likely: Expert. 

The “expert

’In a previous article in "The Independent Australian", Issue 5, 2005, I compared the Eureka Stockade of 1854 and showed how the death of many of the miners at the Stockade at least led in the long run to democratic reforms. I also showed that now, in this year of 2005, the democratic gains of the Stockade, including such rights, which the Eurekans and their democratic heirs, expected would remain in place, such as trial by jury, innocent until proven guilty, the duty of the State to prove guilt, freedom for arbitrary arrest, and the accountability of government to the citizen, to mention but some of these rights, had now been destroyed. In a mood of Doublethink politicians still use the word "democratic", but it has become an empty, hypocritical symbol used to lull the sheeple into capitulation to the rise of globalism and the extinction of personal freedom. That move towards personal slavery, of which David Hicks, is only one symbol, is continuing to mount, and shows little sign of stopping. As a proponent of civil liberty, naturally I am concerned, as all citizens should be, unless they have been hypnotized into a mood of apathy. 

‘Surely the most telling indictment of the lack of fair trial inherent in the proposed military commission process is that no US citizen can be subject to it because of the US constitutional guarantee of a right to a fair trial. John Walker Lindh was whisked out of Cuba to face trial before US civilian courts, as was his right. The Bush Administration consistently rails against the International Criminal Court because it allegedly fails to meet the necessary standards of fair trial guaranteed to all US citizens.