If Those Who Support Aggressive War Had

We Are Beckoned To See The World Through A One-way Mirror, As If We Are Threatened And Innocent And The Rest Of Humanity Is Threatening, Or Wretched, Or Expendable. Our Memory Is Struggling To Rescue The Truth That Human Rights Were Not Handed Down As Privileges From A Parliament, Or A Boardroom, Or An Institution, But That Peace Is Only Possible With Justice And With Information That Gives Us The Power To Act Justly.

In The Sublime Days Before 11 September 2001, When The Powerful Were Routinely Attacking And Terrorising The Weak, And Those Dying Were Black Or Brown-skinned Non-people Living In Faraway Places Such As Zaire And Guatemala, There Was No Terrorism. When The Weak Attacked The Powerful, Spectacularly On 9/11, There Was Terrorism.

In Western Australia, Minerals Are Being Dug Up From Aboriginal Land And Shipped To China For A Profit Of A Billion Dollars A Week. In This, The Richest, 'booming' State, The Prisons Bulge With Stricken Aboriginal People, Including Juveniles Whose Mothers Stand At The Prison Gates, Pleading For Their Release. The Incarceration Of Black Australians Here Is Eight Times That Of Black South Africans During The Last Decade Of Apartheid.

I Think The Accurate Description For The George W. Bush Administration Is A Military Plutocracy. Having Lived And Worked In The United States, I Must Add That I Don't Want To Make Too Much Of The Distinction Between The Bush Regime And Its Predecessors. I Don't See A Great Deal Of Difference.

I Love Irony In Pictures. There's One Photograph From Vietnam By Philip Jones Griffiths That Shows A Very Large Gi Having His Pocket Picked By A Tiny Vietnamese Woman. It Told The Whole Story Of The Clash Of Two Cultures And How The Invader Could Never Win.