Sydney Morning Herald February 16 2003
 

In London as many as two million demonstrators, according to organisers' estimates, snubbed Prime Minister Tony Blair's support of Washington, while Italians said a massive 'no' in a rebuke to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's backing of the hardline US stance.

Demonstrators set US flags ablaze in Islamabad, capital of Pakistan. "Dropping bombs on Iraq is not the way to go about securing the safety of our country," American movie star Susan Sarandon told reporters in New York ahead of a demonstration expected to draw 100,000.

"Bush: hands off Iraq," read one banner in Moscow. 

The combined estimates of demonstration organisers around the world put the total out demonstrating at about 10.5 million, while police and other official estimates suggested something more like 7.7 million.

Across the Middle East, hundreds of thousands raged at US policy, with gun-toting protesters filing through Baghdad, and rallies in Syria and Lebanon.

More than two million people marched in London, according to organisers. Police put the figure at 750,000, saying it was the biggest ever in London.

Several hundred thousand marched across France, with between 100,000 and a quarter of a million parading in Paris.

Protesters from almost across the political spectrum rallied behind the slogan "No to war against Iraq, yes to a world of justice, peace and democracy" in a total of 72 towns.

Rallies fired up in cities across Europe, the Middle East and Asia with protest marches from Zagreb to Calcutta, Damascus to Hongkong.

New York was the focal point of a national United States day of action marking the largest display so far of US public opposition to a military strike on Iraq.

Organisers said they expected more than 100,000 people to take part there in one of the protests in more than 350 cities around the world, including Bangkok, Cairo, Istanbul, Johannesburg, London, Moscow, Paris, Rome, San Francisco and Toronto.

Hollywood stars Susan Sarandon and Danny Glover were among speakers addressing a four-hour rally a stone's throw from United Nations headquarters.

"The government is not representing our concerns," Sarandon told reporters. "There are alternatives to war. Nothing has been proved so far that warrants an invasion of Iraq."

Sarandon also accused the administration of President George W. Bush of "hijacking" the national fears engendered by the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

Among the protesters were relatives of the victims of the September 11 attacks.

Several placards read "Thank You France and Germany" - referring to those countries' opposition to a military conflict.

In Berlin, half a million people, ranging from schoolchildren to pensioners, turned out for one of the largest rallies held in Germany since World War II.

In a rare sign of unity in Israel, 3,000 Jews and Arabs marched together in Tel Aviv. 

About 200,000 Syrians demonstrated in Damascus, with one banner reading: "Axis of Evil: America, Britain, Israel".

In Iraq itself, two massive anti-war rallies filled Baghdad streets, with many protestors carrying guns.

More than three million people rallied in Spain's largest cities of Madrid and Barcelona, according to organisers.

In Moscow, several hundred Communists protested at the US embassy, brandishing banners saying: "Bush, hands off Iraq" and "Bush go away, you are Hitler today".

In Athens, violence broke out on the sidelines of a demonstration, with rioters throwing Molotov cocktails at a government building.

Rallies were reported in dozens of European cities, including Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Sofia, Bern and Brussels, with up to 100,000 in Dublin, and tens of thousand across Scandinavia.

Thousands of South Africans, including three government ministers, lined the streets of Cape Town, bearing placards saying "Bombs kill babies" and "There's a terrorist behind every Bush".

In Asia, schoolgirls, writers, peaceniks, lawyers and trade unionists were among about 3,000 Pakistanis who marched against war on Iraq, burning US flags.

About 10,000 people marched through Calcutta, while rallies were also reported in Hong Kong and Tokyo.

Tens of thousands protested across Australia, the only country apart from Britain to have sent forces to the Gulf to join the US military build-up in preparation for war against Iraq.

Tens of thousands turned out in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to demonstrate against war.

"No war for oil," read one banner.

"No war in our name," said Mairead Maguire, a leading activist in the search for reconciliation between the estranged Roman Catholic and Protestant communities of the divided British province.

A group also demonstrated in Algiers, where demonstrations are banned because of the emergency security situation in Algeria.

                AFP 

Sydney Morning Herald February 16 2003

Organisers of a Sydney march today claimed at least 250,000 people had turned out to protest against US threats of military action in Iraq.

Police said safety fears had forced them to re-route the march.

It was planned to have started and finished in Hyde Park, but organisers told the crowd police were worried about overcrowding and had changed the march destination to the Domain.

The rally is part of a series of demonstrations taking place across Australia today and follows a similar wave of protests across the nation and the world.

Yesterday an estimated 150,000 people marched in Melbourne in protest against US threats to strike Iraq.

Organisers of the Sydney rally had been expecting around 100,000 to attend today's peace march.

Speakers, including NSW Labour Council secretary John Robertson and Always Greener star John Howard, were to address the crowd in Hyde Park before the demonstrators began their march.

Federal Labor heavyweight Laurie Brereton said if Prime Minister John Howard did not listen to those opposed to war, it would be political suicide.

"If he's not prepared to listen then he's on the path to the end of his political career," Mr Brereton told AAP.

"This is not only the biggest protest this city has ever had, it's also the widest cross-section of people."

After participating in a march of some of the protesters through Sydney streets, actor John Howard returned to Hyde Park to address the huge crowd and send a strong message to his political namesake.

He told the crowd that hundreds of thousands of Sydneysiders were out in force to demand the Howard government give up threats of war.

"There is no beginning and no end to this march," Mr Howard said.

"Every single one of us is a reminder to our prime minister that he is our representative.

"The entire CBD is surrounded."

He told the rally Australian society was based on the premise that you do unto others as you would have done unto you.

"This is the rule we teach our children and under this rule we must not kill anyone," he said.

But he said the government was willing to send Australian troops to Iraq to do exactly that.

AAP

Sydney walks in numbers too big to ignore

                By Margo Kingston
                February 16 2003

                It's awesome. The front of Sydney's march for peace arrived back at Hyde Park
                while tens of thousands of people were still waiting to join the march. We're talking
                twelve city blocks here. As I write, people are still leaving Hyde Park on the walk half
                an hour into the speeches at the march end!

                A colleague who marched in Sydney in the 1985 Palm Sunday march (170,000
                people) and the Sydney Harbour bridge walk for reconciliation (200,000 people) said
                it was even bigger. Some are saying 250,000, the biggest protest in Sydney's
                history. Some are saying it could be closer to 500,000! City shoppers were
                dumbstruck, hundreds lining the march route eyes wide, mouths open.

                At the head of the protest marched three old, battle scarred men of Australian
                politics - Laurie Brereton, NSW Labor right hard-man and an opponent of any
                Australian ground troops if the UN gives the US the tick, Green icon Bob Brown and
                Peter Baume, Fraser Government minister, all shouting "No war". The trio summed
                up the incredible diversity of people there in the stinking, sweating heat - North Shore
                matrons rubbing shoulders with skinheads, young families with strollers, groovy
                trendoids angsting over which anti-war T shirt to buy.

                A friend of said on Friday she knew it would be big because friends kept calling to
                say, "What do you wear to a protest?" How Sydney. 

                It's easy to get carried away at the sight of the people of Sydney reclaiming the city
                to make their point, but something this big has to have an effect. As does a turnout
                of 5,000 in the country town of Armidale - a quarter of its population.

                It's now hard to see Labor finding a way to support the war if the UN doesn't
                endorse George Bush's war - even if only one country exercises its veto. Simon
                Crean wasn't scheduled to speak at any march this weekend, but it looks like the
                150,000 people marching in Melbourne on Friday night changed his mind. This
                weekend could be one of those "turning points", where suddenly the earth moves,
                the mood shifts, and politics is transformed in an instant. 

                This morning on the Sunday program, Laurie Oakes said to foreign affairs
                spokesman Kevin Rudd: "Carmen Lawrence is out there giving fiery speeches to
                these demonstrations. Why aren't you and Simon Crean addressing rallies as well?"

                "Well, Simon will be speaking to the rally here in Brisbane today, Laurie. I'll be
                attending that rally as well," Rudd replied. Labor is getting locked in. It can't afford
                not to, unless it wants to throw votes to the Greens.

                Rudd also added another refinement to Labor's policy. Before, it would consider
                agreeing to a unilateral US strike if one country vetoed a UN resolution for force.
                Now it will also require the very thing the United States has been unable to deliver so
                far. "If it gets to the stage where the United States was seeking to advance a case
                outside the framework of the United Nations Security Council that case would have to
                rest on establishing a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq and the events of September
                eleven," Rudd said. "Or secondly, that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability
                and threat represent a real and present danger not just a theoretical danger to our
                security today. As of today, no such case has been made."

                That's very close to a no. Very close. The stage is set for a rip roaring political battle
                in Australia where the NSW election could become a defacto referendum on the war.
                Howard's very legitimacy could be at stake if he defies public opinion to join a
                unilateral strike. Soldiers do not die for the Prime Minister, of for the Australian
                government. They agree to risk their lives for the Australian people. If the Australian
                people say no, there will be calls for the Senate to bring down a government which
                wishes to defy the people's will on war. 

                Sydney rarely matches the activism of Melbourne on the really big issues, let alone
                beats it hands down. Right at the front of the march, behind Laurie Brereton, walked
                two of his factional opponents, Labor left shadow ministers Daryl Melham and John
                Faulkner. If the people's voice isn't enough, the threat of a split in the Labor Party is.
                Labor will now take on this cause. John Howard's work will have just begun when he
                gets home from his "peace mission".

                Laurie Brereton's speech to parliament on the war, where he argues against any
                Australian ground troops even in a UN sanctioned war, is here:

Shroud over Guernica

                February 5 2003

                This is Laurie Brereton's speech to federal Parliament yesterday on war with Iraq.

                (For Brereton's foreign policy approach - and to see how drastically the Coalition
                has transformed our foreign policy - see Brereton's pre-election speech as Labor's
                foreign affairs spokesman at Brereton Vision.)

                When this House debated the prospect of war with Iraq on 17 September last year, I
                was in New York, representing the Parliament as part of Australia's delegation to the
                United Nations. There I had an opportunity to observe the working of the Security
                Council, the principle UN body charged with keeping the peace.

                Outside the entrance of the Council, the place where Security Council
                representatives make statements to the press, there hangs a reproduction of Pablo
                Picasso's most celebrated work Guernica. The story of Guernica is well known but
                deserves to be told again. 

                On 26 April 1937, German bombers attacked the town of Guernica in northern
                Spain. The village was left in ruins with sixteen hundred civilians killed or wounded.
                This act of terror - the first large scale aerial attack against a civilian population
                centre - outraged the world. It compelled Picasso, then living in Paris, to begin the
                work that would become his testament against the horrors of war and one of the
                greatest artworks of the twentieth century.

                I'm told that the UN's Guernica was donated by the philanthropist Nelson A
                Rockefeller in 1985. Unfortunately, it is now no longer on display. According to press
                reports, on 27 January this year a large blue curtain was hung to cover it up.
                Questioned why the painting had been covered, UN press spokesman Fred Eckhard
                said the blue curtain was a technically better background for the cameras covering
                statements being made outside the Security Council.

                This may be the official explanation, but the same media reports quote unnamed
                diplomats observing that it would not be appropriate for the US Ambassador at the
                UN John Negroponte or Secretary of State Colin Powell to talk about war with Iraq
                against a backdrop depicting images of women and children and animals crying with
                horror and showing the suffering of war.

                Whatever the reasons, there is a profound symbolism in pulling a shroud over this
                great work of art. For throughout the debate on Iraq, whether at the UN, in the US,
                or here in Australia, there has been a remarkable degree of obfuscation, evasion and
                denial, and never more so than when it comes to the grim realities of military action.

                Our Prime Minister denies, of course, that he has committed Australian troops to
                war.

                He denies that he shares the Bush Administration's goal of "regime change" in
                Baghdad.

                He doesn't rule out supporting a unilateral attack, an attack not authorised by the UN,
                even though this would constitute a gross violation of international law.

                The Prime Minister has nothing to say about the long-term implications of invading
                and occupying Iraq - either for the stability of the Middle East or for terrorist threat to
                Australia.

                And the Prime Minister has only platitudes to offer about the humanitarian cost of
                war. He has nothing to say about the thousands of lives that may be lost, the homes,
                hospitals and schools that will be destroyed or the hundreds of thousands of
                refugees who will be forced to flee their homes.

                All along the Prime Minister dissembles, denies and evades. From the very beginning
                of this debate he has sought to pull his own curtain of deceit over his war diplomacy.

                We are certainly on the brink of war. Matters will probably come to a head in the
                second half of this month. The US and the UK will seek a measure of endorsement
                for military action from the Security Council. Given the immense US leverage, this
                may be forthcoming. It appears more likely than it did some weeks ago. Failing that
                the US and the UK will attack Iraq anyway.

                But the case for war has not been made.

                Of course, Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator, responsible for appalling war crimes
                and abuse of human rights. But overthrowing the government of a sovereign state is
                an extraordinary undertaking. I haven't seen much evidence to suggest that human
                rights is a driving element of US or UK policy.

                Nor is this part of the war against terrorism. Despicable as he is, Saddam Hussein
                has not been linked to the events of September 11, 2001. Nor has evidence been
                presented indicating Iraq has given or plans to give weapons of mass destruction to
                terrorist organisations. 

                Secretary of State Powell will apparently present new information to the Security
                Council, but I think we would have already heard of any definitive evidence linking
                Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. The Americans are already telling the world they
                haven't got a smoking gun. 

                Nor has the international community exhausted all the diplomatic options to secure
                the elimination of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction capability. Iraq has accepted
                the resumption of UN weapon inspections and has so far not restricted their
                activities. It is argued, that Iraq should cooperate more positively. This may well be
                so, but a lack of pro-active cooperation is no case for war. 

                It must also be recognised that Saddam Hussein's overwhelming interest is in
                survival. Why would he unleash a weapon of mass destruction that would invite
                overwhelming US retaliation? Paradoxically, a military effort to eliminate Hussein is
                precisely the circumstance most likely to prompt Iraq to use any capability it
                possess. It may indeed be the circumstance in which Hussein hands chemical and
                biological agents to terrorist networks. 

                But this is a risk the United States is apparently prepared to take in order to impose
                its will.

                The truth is US policy toward Iraq is less about the threat of weapons of mass
                destruction than it is about redrawing the strategic map of the Middle East. As I have
                said on previous occasions, "regime change" is precisely what is says. It is about
                installing a pro-American regime in Baghdad. It is about changing the regime that
                controls Iraq's oil wealth. It's about putting in place a regime supportive of the US
                military presence in the Middle East.

                And in the process, the US may unleash events with unpredictable consequences -
                especially in the longer term. The US is already engaged in an open-ended
                commitment in Afghanistan. The occupation and reconstruction of Iraq will be a vastly
                greater undertaking with unpredictable consequences for the whole Middle East.

                Rebuilding Iraq under a new pro-American government will be a task fraught with
                difficulty. It will require the support of the broad international community - support the
                US has failed so far to mobilise.

                Coupled with the ongoing horror of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a US-led assault
                on Iraq will fuel Islamic extremism and provide many new recruits for terrorist
                groups. 

                The US may rapidly achieve its military objectives, but these may prove to be steps
                into a strategic and political morass. 

                Here in this debate, the Howard Government hasn't anything to say about the
                long-term implications of military action and the prospective occupation of Iraq. Our
                Government will support whatever action the US takes - it's as simple as that.

                And while Australia's military commitment to an attack will be but a small part of the
                US-led force, our Government's rhetoric has put Australia in the very front rank of
                George Bush's cheer squad. With all this flag waving for Bush, comes an increased
                risk of future terrorist attacks against Australians both overseas and at home.

                Since the US President asserted his right to take unilateral military action against any
                threat he perceived to his country's interests, only the UK and Australia have
                declared enthusiastic support. And now the Prime Minister is preparing to scurry off
                to Washington, hoping to make the Bush-Blair duo a triumvirate.

                Australia's outspoken identification with the US and the UK as global enforcers
                places us at substantially greater risk of terrorist attack. By his rhetoric and his
                actions, the Prime Minister has incited and invited extremist attention towards
                Australia.

                The danger will be greatest for Australians overseas - for Australian embassies and
                consulates, for Australian businesses and our tourists as we have already seen so
                tragically with the Bali bombings.

                If the Government were honest in its anti-terrorism advertising campaign, it would
                warn Australians very clearly and directly of the increased risk of further terrorist
                horror if we are involved in a US-led attack on Iraq.

                And where should Australia be standing on this whole issue? I put it to this House
                that we should be standing for the rule of international law. We should be standing
                with the collective authority of the United Nations. We should be arguing against
                unilateralism. We should be making it clear that the case for military action has not
                been made out. We should make it clear that there can be no case for military action
                while weapons inspections are continuing. 

                In the event of Iraqi obstruction, military action should only follow with explicit
                authorisation by the Security Council. A further Security Council resolution is essential
                for military action to have any legitimacy. 

                For our part, Australia should not support military action without this explicit authority.
                Nor should we support military action that extends beyond the terms of an explicit
                mandate. 

                In the event that the UN does authorise military force, it is my firm view that
                Australia's involvement should be limited to the present naval enforcement of UN
                sanctions and our bilateral logistical and intelligence cooperation with the United
                States.

                UN authorisation should not be the determining factor in whether Australian ground
                troops are committed. Nor does our strong alliance with the US oblige Australia to
               automatically lend our ground troops in direct support of each and every American
                military action.

                Australia did not commit ground troops in the 1991 Gulf War - and that was in
                response to the invasion of Kuwait. No compelling case has been made out for
                Australian troops to fight in Iraq now.

                And we should all be mindful of what will follow any invasion. Pentagon planning
                provides for an extended occupation and administration of Iraq. The degree to which
                an occupation force and interim administration would operate under UN auspices is
                unclear.

                The US will be anxious to maintain a broad coalition in the post-attack period.
                Washington may well press its allies to rotate our military contingents and replace
                strike forces with units more suited to occupation duties. Australia could well be
                asked to contribute transport and logistic units, medical support units and possibly
                regular infantry. This is an issue that has to date received virtually no attention.

                Australian involvement in a longer-term US-occupation of Iraq has the potential to
                cause significant international and regional problems for us. Adverse reactions will
                likely follow in both the Middle East and South East Asia.

                It is an absolute tragedy that our Prime Minister has taken Australia such a long way
                down this road to war. And its all been done through dissembling and deceit.

                Hopefully today's debate will not be the last before the Prime Minister announces
                that our troops are going into action and that a state of war exists between Australia
                and Iraq. Hopefully this won't be the last opportunity for debate before we see
                demonstrated the enormous devastation that can be wrought by the world's most
                advanced bombers and missiles.

                We may well live in the age of the so-called "smart bomb", but the horror on the
                ground will be just the same as that visited upon the villagers of Guernica sixty-five
                years ago. Innocent Iraqis - men, women and children will pay a terrible price. And it
                won't be possible to pull a curtain over that.