Nemesis

THE MUFTI OF LAKEMBA IS A GREAT THREAT TO AUSTRALIA

Con George-Kotzabasis

The praise with which Mufti Sheik Al- Hilaly, the religious leader of Australian Muslims, anointed suicide bombers and the terrorists of Hezbollah, and his reference to September 11 as ‘God’s work against oppressors’, in his sermon at the Lebanon mosque, should be of great concern to all Australians, from whatever cultural background, and should be raising the hackles of the government. This is in despite of the denials and the renunciatory statements of his spokesman Keysar Trad, with his by now repeated refrain, that the comments of the Sheik had been taken ‘out of context’, which Mr. Trad uses as an escape hatch for the inflammatory statements of the Mufti, and as a means to cozen and deceive the Australian public. However, Australians should not allow themselves to be tricked by this mouthful of deceptions belched forth by his spokesman, and should vehemently reject them as another attempt by Mr.Trad to fool them.

Keysar Trad’s conduct and behaviour reminds one of the typical cunning of a vendor in a bazaar, who uses guile and lies to sell his shoddy products to the public. And one would be foolish not to assume, that both the Sheik and his spokesman have a bountiful storage of guile and lies, by which they will attempt to cover up their treacherous actions and statements, and hence, hoodwink the Australian public. Moreover, it is well known that most Arabs trade on lies in all spheres of life. Especially in the present circumstances, when radical Islam considers itself to be engaged in a deadly holy war against the infidels of the West and of Israel, the telling of lies is part of its holy armour. Radical Islam can seek and find justification for this in the sacred writings of Mohammed, where he states that in war Muslims are not banned from telling lies.

Certainly, the telling of lies is not an exclusive trait of a particular people. In certain circumstances all people will tell lies. But usually in human conflicts of all kinds, mendacity is the “armour” and “shield” of the weak, not of the strong, as the former have no ample means at their disposal, like the latter, either for offence or defence, and therefore resort as a result of this lack of means to disingenuousness and guilefulness against their opponents. Undoubtedly, radical Islam in its implacable confrontation with the West, and more precisely with the U.S.A., is the weaker foe in contrast to its opponent. It would therefore be prudent to take all the denials of the Mufti and his spokesman, with more than a grain of salt. However, no veneer of lies can hide and conceal the real beliefs and intentions of the Mufti. Sheik Al-Hilaly’s, “Sermon of Lebanon” represents and embodies these real beliefs and intentions in the most transparent and limpid way. His incendiary and inflammatory statements and his direct inciting of the youth of Islam to be heroes and martyrs in its cause, which according to the Mufti is advancing everywhere, reveals lucidly that he is a man of war and not of peace. Moreover, his comments to this congregation of believers they should not be surprised if in the near future Islamic ideology would pervade into Western countries, and indeed, that one would even hear ‘Állah is great from the top of the White House’, shows that the Mufti is no mere defender of Islam, but an aggressor, who really believes that the goal of radical militant Islam, his cause, is the subjugation and domination of the West.

Furthermore, his sermon also reveals a grim aspect of the Muslim Community in our country. The existence, among the majority of moderate Muslims, of an aberrant dangerous fundamentalist breed of “snakes” that are lurking in the “grassy lawns” of Australia, and that he has rivals within the country who are even more radical and militant than himself. His sermon therefore, from far off Lebanon, had the further aim of passing on a message to the followers of those fundamentalist imams (whose followers obviously are not small in number), that he himself is as radical as their leaders – all in the hope of winning them over to his side. The Government and ASIO therefore, need to be aware of this portentous danger that lies within the borders of our country, and to take the appropriate hard measures against it.

It would be the ultimate folly of any government not to take these statements of Mufti Hilaly as being most dangerous to Australia. At the present moment, Australia is involved in an implacable and relentless war with global terror. The Howard government has wisely chosen to join the U.S., the U.K. and its other allies in this war against terror, which threatens the civilised world with catastrophic annihilation. For this purpose, it has committed and sent its brave young men and women to fight both in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is pivotal to the defeat of global terror and which can only be accomplished by fighting it on two fronts, i.e., also against the rogue states which support directly and indirectly terrorists and which are more likely than not to supply weapons of mass destruction to the latter, with devastating consequences upon the survival and viability of open and free societies.

It is for this reason necessary, not merely to denounce the statements of the Mufti, as the Foreign Minister Mr. Downer has done, but to take firm unrelenting measures against the Mufti and his cohorts, for inciting young Muslims to join the ranks of suicide bombers and to become martyrs in this holy war against the infidels.

Sheik Al-Hilaly is an Australian citizen, and as such his statements are treasonable since they support the enemies of Australia, with whom the latter is currently engaged in war. It behoves therefore that the government enact immediately preventative measures that would restrain the Mufti and other radicals from inciting Muslims in this country to engage in a Jihad against Australians. If a Muslim country such as Indonesia could charge the religious leader of Jemaah Islamiah, Abu Bakar Bashir, with offences related to terrorism that would put the latter in jail, why should Australia not do likewise? Does it have to have a Bali bombing on its own territory perpetrated by local Muslim terrorists, inspired and instigated by the teachings and statements of the Mufti, or of his rival fundamentalists, before the government will find the grit, fortitude, and resolve to jail Sheik Al-Hilaly? But no wise, imaginative, and strong government acts retroactively.
As predicted above, the Mufti has an abundance of cunning and duplicity in the storage of his mind. On his return to Australia he tried to conceal his insidious, sinister, and treasonous statements – this time behind the facade of Arab poetry. In his interview on the ABC on the 7th of March 2004, he said that his comments had to be taken within the poetic context in which they had been expressed and must be interpreted within such a context. However, the enormity of the Sheik’s cover up has been exposed by his fellow Arabs themselves. The chief executive of The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils’ Amjad Mehboob, said that many Muslims were concerned that Sheik Al- Hilaly’s speech had been interpreted (no poetic interpretation by his fellow Muslims?) as ‘a call to arms’, although in the same interview Mr.Mehboob said that the Sheik was a ‘moderate and tolerant leader’. But this contradictory comment of Mr. Mehboob reveals the Janus nature of many Arab leaders and the many faces with which they “double-speak”.

The war against global terror will not be won easily unless governments also uproot the breeding grounds of terror, which many Islamic schools and mosques are, not only in the East, but also, in the West. It is therefore of the utmost importance that the Australian government takes prerequisite and firm measures that prevent Islamic schools and mosques from propagating, either openly, or by insidious and devious means (the use of poetry?), the radical teachings of the fundamentalists, and if they continue to do so, the government should take the most severe measures against the teachers of these schools and mosques and should immediately stop subsidising these institutions with tax payers’ money.

It is about time that the cocoon of lies under which the Mufti of Lakemba hides and conceals his true beliefs and intentions be broken, and he be exposed for the real and great danger he poses to Australia. No volume of dissembling by his spokesman Keysar Trad will hide the fact that the Sheik is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

The article was written on March 8, 2004, and published in my book, ‘Unveiling The War Against Terror: Fight Right War Or Lose The Right To Exist’, on the same year.

MOUNT GLOBALIZATION OR BE ITS PREY

Con George-Kotzabasis

A tiger is stalking the world the tiger of globalization. Nations and peoples who, gazelle-like, are frightened and take flight before the huge ferocious “life-threatening” leaps and bounds of this tiger, are to be mauled and be eaten, as no swift flight can make them escape from the lightning speed with which globalization pursues its quarry.

For this will be the fate of nations and peoples who chose to be the prey instead of being the “hunter” of globalization. To be the hunter however, does not imply that one has to slay the “beast” of globalization. Instead, it implies that like a consummate broncobuster, one has to mount the tiger and adapt to its fast and sinewy movements while at the same time “taming” it.

This is the only way that countries can save themselves from the threatening onslaught of globalization. More importantly still, to be among its winners. But it’s fundamentally important to be prudent winners, that is, the winner does not take all. No clever country or wise person would desire to be an absolute winner. Only gamblers would crave to be so. But the wins of a casino are ephemeral wins, and soon and inevitably are followed by loses. Hence, if the winners of globalization wish and aspire to keep and to augment their gains, it’s necessary that they look after and take care of the losers of globalization. As the latter can only be politically sustained and continue to succeed and be beneficial to mankind if it’s a “caring globalization”, if its heart is the “make –up” of its robust mien. If not, it will face the freezing winds of a backlash of a ‘winter of discontent’, of all the countries and peoples who are fearful of its storming of the globe. Its losers therefore will be diffident and distrustful of the touted benefits that could accrue to them, and hence reluctant to admit the Lexus into the groves of their olive trees, to paraphrase Thomas Friedman, of the New York Times

The currently unstoppable revolution in technology, finance, and information, has made all nations vulnerable to the waves of global competition. Only those nations that swim on the crests of these waves will survive and be the winners in this relentless struggle. This implies moreover, that no nation can economically survive in isolation even if it possesses unique and an abundance of natural resources. Nor can it appeal to the bungled remedies of the past, such as the provision of subsidies to defunct industries. Nor can it depend on the invention of new populist nostrums, such as “fair trade” proposed by the dinosaur delegates in a Labor Party Conference in Hobart. On the contrary, only through the process of creative reconstruction in the economic, industrial, commercial, and social structures of a country, is the
”waydrome” to success. In this context, to talk about fair trade is to live in dodo fairyland. Indeed, it’s like asking Olympian super athletes, like Cathy Freeman, to be fair to their lesser competitors.

How to Deal with the Challenge of Globalization

Thomas Friedman in his book, ‘The Lexus and the Olive Tree’, argues, that ‘the revolution in technology, finance, and information did three things. It lowered the barriers of entry into almost any business, and it rapidly increased competition and the speed by which a product moves from being an innovation to being a commodity.’ Technology expands production to global dimensions, ‘knitting the world together.’ Finance with the collapse of regulated exchange rates, penetrates all the profitable niches of the world in its avaricious dynamic drive for profit. No raising of granite protective walls or the setting up of any barriers can prevent the ‘ “Electronic Herd’s” ‘ power to move its capital on world markets. Furthermore, information technology ‘brings home to everyone how ahead or behind they are in contrast to other countries.’ This provides a cue and spurs people to invest in countries where lucrative profits can be made by ‘investing through the internet on a global scale.’ Hence, the world is no longer carried on the back of the slow moving Atlas, but on the back of the swift electron-moving Microchip. In such a world all kind of barriers have the strength of a plastic balloon. But even if it were possible to erect impenetrable barriers, the countries that did so would bring upon themselves “the day after”, the consequences of “nuclear” economic and social devastation. That is, the result for these countries would be to throw themselves into the abyss of poverty and squalor, and hence unwittingly deprive their people the opportunity to become wealthier by being on the trajectory of globalization.

It’s by accepting the challenges of globalization with imagination and boldness that countries and their peoples will not only be strengthening their intellectual and moral fiber that will position them on the launching pad of globalization, but will also be transporting them to the land of cornucopia, to material and spiritual abundance. It’s imperative therefore, that political leaders deliberately and consciously decide to prepare their people to enter into this benign circle of feedback. That is, the intellectual and moral strength and knowledge of their people will maximize the benefits accruing from globalization and minimize its disadvantages. And the successes of actively being engaged with the cutting-edge of the globe will in turn further enhance this intellectual and moral vigor and knowledge of their people. In such a brave new world, one has to tell people to ‘remove their belongings’, to use a phrase of Vladimir Nabokov, of moaning. There is no room for resentment and gripe against countries and peoples who succeed. Success itself will be redistributed and will not remain in the same hands. Everyone will have the opportunity, endowed with grit, chutzpah, and entrepreneurial flair, to succeed.

For the first time in human history, globalization has the potential to bring in its wake the “democratization of success”. No scion of elites will be able to capture its benefits and lock them up ever safely and ever after in their vaults. The microchip is sovereign. Hence the corridors of wealth will be accessible to all who have the knowledge and ambition to use it. And if Shakespearian sovereigns could trade their kingdoms for a horse, business scions, like James Packer, will have to trade their wealth and power for a microchip.

Globalization also has the potential to usher in the empowerment of all classes and creeds. Ironically, capitalist globalization might realize Marx’s dream- the fulfillment of the individual who performs his practical affairs during the day, fishes in the evening, and writes and “practices” poetry during the night. And to cap it all, the Communist Manifesto’s slogan, “workers of the world unite”, could be accomplished by globalization. The only difference being that the unity of workers will not arise out of enmity against capitalist entrepreneurs, but out of the benign desire to emulate the achievements of the latter, as every worker with the required training and knowledge will have the ability of doing so.

HOW TO RAISE ALL BOATS AND CANOES IN THIS INUNDATION OF GLOBALIZATION

We need however to be critically aware of the downside of globalization and treat its blemishes effectively. It’s a truism that not all people will benefit from globalization. There will be losers! In all civilizations there have been winners and losers. The human race cannot jump over the shadow of this accursed fact. Either as a result of individual propensities or lack of resilience and ability to adapt to the new, and strenuous circumstances of globalization, many people will fall behind and will be disadvantaged. But because of globalization’s vast production of wealth, it has the capacity to compensate the losers, and indeed, to pull them out of their disadvantaged position. In this task governments will play a decisive role.

First, they will have to deal with the backlash that arises from people who are struck with the dire effects of globalization. While globalization shortens the distances of the world and makes it accessible to many people and improves economically their well-being, at the same time it lengthens the rusty chain of un-economic and defunct industries in many developed and developing countries. Many workers, therefore, who for years worked in these industries, are thrown out of them and find themselves unemployed and unemployable. The direct beneficiaries of globalization therefore, not only have a moral responsibility, but also a vested interest, to take care of the disenfranchised from the advantages of globalization, if the latter are to be prevented from being converted into modern Luddites, and start smashing the machine of globalization, by means of war, terrorism, and computer hacking.

Secondly, to head off and pacify this backlash, governments will have to prise open new thinking horizons, and to transform this resentment into support for globalization. Since inequality among human beings, as well as of other primates, is nature’s regime, governments must contrive clever policies to redress and reverse this order of inequality and bring some sort of balance in this inequity of nature. In the “clever” country, prosperity does not have to be equated with “equality”. People do not have to be equal in certain natural endowments with those who generate wealth and prosperity, to share the fruits of this prosperity. The process of globalization begets such huge wealth that it would not be difficult for governments to impose the burden upon, and indeed persuade, its producers, that it’s to their own interest to share part of this wealth with the disadvantaged of globalization. Especially, when this divestment of wealth will not diminish the capital investment funds of the former, as we will show below.

Thirdly, governments will redistribute this part of wealth by the following international multilateral policy mechanism, by imposing a levy or surtax on the profits of all “globetrotting” corporations, financial institutions, and foreign currency speculators. Once, these funds of the levy are collected by governments, they will be transmitted to an international body set up by these governments. Let us name this body the International Globalization Fund (IGF). The central task of this entity will be (a) to identify those nations and peoples whose livelihood has been affected negatively by globalization, and (b) to subsidize the buying of shares in multinational corporations and world financial institutions, by these nations and peoples. In the case of some people who might not have any financial savings of their own, the IGF will provide them with special securities or bonds, thus enabling them, despite their lack of savings, to be shareholders in this international economy. Moreover, such a policy will not engender any disincentives to private enterprise. As the funds accruing from the levy will not be spend by governments in fuzzy, boondoggle industrial plans or in subsidizing defunct industries, at the expense of the private sector. The build up of a “hydraulic pipe” between the international economy and the disadvantaged of this economy, will allow the funds that are transmitted to the latter in the form of subsidies and securities by the IGF, to be sluiced back through this pipe to the multinational corporations in the form of equity capital. Hence, the investment funds of these entrepreneurial entities will not be diminished.

Thus, the eyes of all, not only of those who gain directly from their engagement with globalization, will be focused on the screens of the computers. Even people who lack knowledge and adeptness to use the modern technology will enter and be denizens of this brave new world of the internet, as equity holders. Sharing the wealth that is spawned by the Midas microchip touch of globalization. The magic flying carpet of globalization will have everyone aboard.

It depends on the creative thinking, imagination and Thatcherite will and determination of governments whether globalization will be politically and economically sustainable. And whether by riding it, the fruits of its wealth will also be distributed to all those nations and peoples whose livelihoods are going to be lost in this process of ‘creative destruction’. Whether the opening of the floodgates of globalization will raise all boats and canoes in this global inundation of its waters.

HIC RHODUS HIC SALTA

The article was written on September 17, 2001, and was first published in the English supplement of Neos Kosmos on the same date

A CURSE IS HAUNTING THE LEADERS OF EUROPE

George Kotzabasis

A revisiting curse is haunting the ruling elites of “old” Europe, the curse of Munich. The three witches of Macbeth have taken leave of their domicile on the Scottish highlands, to settle on the banks of the foggy politically putrid vapors of the Seine, the Neva and the Rhine, to brew their curse while singing in unison their ditty, “weakness is strength and strength is weakness”. It’s this same ditty, that the diplomatic emissaries of the accursed triumvirate of Chirac, Putin, and Schroeder – the latter being now replaced by Angela Merkel who apparently would like to take a sturdier pro-American stand but she is politically constrained in doing so – will be singing too in the international forums that are attempting to deal with the critical situation that is unfolding in Iran. Tragically, however, the repetition of the disastrous policy of the Munich appeasement, which John Maynard Keynes called “unheroic cunctation”, in our century, is not going to be repeated the second time around as “farce”, as Marx presaged, but even as a greater tragedy than the trail of events that followed the appeasement of 1938. Alas, this is the “apocalyptic” threat that is posed against the West by Iran’s future acquisition of nuclear weapons, whose unappeasable fanatic president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in his pursuit to “wipe Israel off the map”, and to destroy even, Khomeini’s “Great Satan”, America, as a holy warrior would deploy with paradisiacal bliss against the infidels of the West. Especially, when he has made it translucently clear that he wants “to bring the reappearance of Imam Mahdi, the Messiah, who would herald the Last Judgment and the end of the world”, to quote Dr.Leanne Piggott, from the University of NSW. Moreover, the Islamic Jihadist “alliance” of Iran with a sundry of suicidal terrorist fanatics who operate on a global scale enhances this threat at an exponential rate and makes it even more ominously real.

How Western nations, especially the United States, will respond to this perilous threat emanating from the uncompromising fanatical stand of Iran’s president, is the most crucial issue of our times. There is no room for optimism that Iran’s “unbalanced act”, under its present leadership, will fall into the “net of diplomacy”. Especially, when its leadership is witnessing the lack of unity and discord that exists among some major Western nations, as well as with that powerful “outsider” China, as to the best way to frustrate and stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Its leaders therefore make the safe wager that these nations will be unable to consolidate a strong unshakable unity that would prevent Iran from entering the nuclear club. Thus the religious fanatic Ahmadinejad, is taking lessons from the most secular of modern dictators while the leaders of old Europe shut their eyes before these lessons. If the transmigration of souls, according to ancient belief, could bring back Hitler’s soul, this time embodied in the form of a lecturer giving seminars on topics of brinkmanship, political bluff and deception, in which he excelled, among his audience one would notice the peculiar absence of Europeans, with one exception, and the presence of a few Americans from a rare breed, considering their strong isolationist heritage, but not from the blue ribbon states. However, one could not miss the conspicuous presence of a swarthy southern Asian, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad himself, who being keen to learn the arts of diplomatic mendacity, dissembling, and cozenage, from a master virtuoso – who was able to “transfix” the Prime minister of a great country, Britain, in a state of irremediable illusions that played such a tragic part in not preventing the great catastrophe that would befall upon the world ­– was absorbing in a state of trance the imperative lessons that the transmigrated soul of Hitler was exuding. Thus it was, that the present leaders of old Europe, whose peoples in the recent past had suffered death and destruction on an immense scale, as a result of incomprehensible and unforgivable errors of judgment, a welter of unimaginable illusions, and a cowardly lack of resolve, by their political predecessors, are doltishly unable to comprehend the lessons of that tragic era. And deliberately are closing their eyes to the diplomatic debacles an ensemble arriviste European politicians had suffered in the hands of Hitler. Thus, Talleyrand’s touché about the Bourbons, “that they have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing”, completely applies to the present parvenu leaders of old Europe.

NO PARALLEL BETWEEN AHMADINEJAD AND HITLER?

But to respond in advance to those who argue that there is no parallel and no similarity between Hitler’s Germany and Ahmadinejad’s Iran, either in industrial-military power or in ideology (after all Ahmadinejad has not written his Mein Kampf), is to be purblind to the reality that in a war of a clash of civilizations between Islamofascism and Western freedom, the former as an aggressor does not have to be the equal in overall industrial or military might over his enemies, but only to be relatively “equal” in the ultimate destructive weapon. And his strength from the fanatic resolve that emanates from a fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran, which is the godly substitute of Mein Kampf, makes his ideology even more dangerous than the one of the Nazis. Moreover, Iran would possess an enormous strategic advantage over its infidel enemies by having at its disposal numerous suicidal fanatic terrorists, both from Muslim countries and those residing in the West, as fifth-columnists, whom once it had supplied with weapons of mass destruction, and indeed, with portable nuclear weapons, would deploy them lethally against the West.

The contention that the possession of nuclear weapons by Iran would not pose a threat to the West as the former would follow, like the Soviet Union, the logic of deterrence, the doctrine of mutual assured destruction, is completely wrong as it totally disregards the fundamental difference that propelled the geopolitical ambitions of The Soviet Union and those that propel Iran’s. The former, despite the rhetoric of its uncompromising ideology, from its inception always encompassed in its policies Western rationale and realpolitik, from Lenin’s NEP, New Economic Policy, to Stalin’s alliance with Hitler, which was epitomized by Stalin’s question, “how many divisions does the pope have?” Such a stand by the Soviets was hardly surprising, since the father of its ideology Karl Marx was profoundly steeped in the culture of Western civilization, not to mention the fact that Russia itself after Peter the great was part of that civilization. Also, a more recent example of realpolitik by the Russians was Krutchev’s “blinking” before Kennedy’s naval blockade of Cuba, and the threat this confrontation between the two superpowers portended for mankind.

Contrariwise, the Iranians under the fanatic leadership of Ahmadinejad, whose goal is to bring the City Of God on earth, rationality is overtly absent from its policies of aggression. Especially when it perceives that its enemies sui generis are morally and politically weak and would not be willing to jeopardize the comforts and luxuries that flow from an “unruffled” economic development by taking a stand of belligerence against it that would imperil their comfortable lives. An illustration of such a misconceived perception was first the belief of Osama bin Laden that he could directly attack the US without the latter retaliating against him and the Taliban with all the might of its military force. And secondly, Sadam Hussein’s belief, that by manipulating the peaceful propensities of the major European countries, of France, Germany, and Russia – since they were lavishly feeding themselves off from the trough of corruption that Saddam had provided for their insatiable greed, through the oil-for-food programme, they were careful not to “destabilize” this sumptuous trough – he would be able to check the Americans from attacking him. In both these cases it was the “irrational exuberance”, to use a term of the former Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, of bin Laden and Saddam that brought their destruction. And it’s the same irrationality that enshrouds in its black veil Iran’s fanatic leadership. Indeed, president Ahmadinejad’s irrationality is even more deep-seated in view of his denial about the holocaust and his statement of “wiping Israel off the map”. It will also be much more dangerous if this irrationality is going to be armed with nuclear weapons, as it would threaten a great part of the world with annihilation including of course Iran.

To expect that deterrence would prevent such destruction from occurring is a wish of the will-o’-the-wisp. The concept of deterrence, in geopolitical terms, has its deep roots in rationality and can only affect and impact rational actors. It would be a great illusion to expect leaders, such as Ahmadinejad, who are ardent believers in final Last Judgment ideologies and whose only “rational” communication is with the “heavenly” clouds, would be prone to involve themselves in a rational discourse. This would be especially so, if they sense that their foes are disunited and weak and see themselves holding the upper hand. Indeed, the debility of its enemies in the minds of these fanatics, reassures them that the implacable and uncompromising hard stand against their foes has the imprimatur of their God. Moreover, the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran and its jumping over all the diplomatic hurdles that so foolishly an impotent leadership of the West placed as a substitute for its lack of decisive action that would have prevented such acquisition, would make Ahmadinejad not only a hero, of almost a Saladinesque stature, among Iranians, but among all the Muslims of the world. Such a great political, diplomatic, and strategic victory over the pre-eminent powers of the West by Ahmadenijad would confer upon him such a political aura that would vouchsafe his presidency in perpetuity. Hence, all the blissful hopes of the West that a robust political opposition could oust the mullahs and Ahmadinejad from the helm of power would prove to be a mirage.

“KISS OF DEATH” DIPLOMACY

So there are two paramount questions that Western nations must answer. What kind of strategy, and which nation or nations could implement such a strategy that would effectively crash the insatiable desire of Iran’s leaders to acquire nuclear weapons? To answer the second question first, the only nation that irrefragably could implement such a strategy successfully is the United States. Supported by a number of nations and their peoples from Europe and Asia that would exclude however Spain, France, Russia, and possibly even Germany under its new government, since the solid support of an American strategy by the latter nations would be highly improbable. The reason being that these nations as lesser powers but with visions of grandeur-with the exclusion of Spain-view the US with envy if not with animosity. Moreover, in a world where the US is the sole hyper-power and these nations are not militarily threatened by another super-power, as they were during the Cold War, they consider themselves to have enough elbow room in the international arena to achieve their differentiated geopolitical interests without endorsing, and in opposition to, US interests. Another politically insurmountable problem is, particularly for France and Germany and some other south-western European nations, even if a new leadership arose within a short time among the latter with a desire to take a pro-American stand, this leadership would still be politically hoisted on their nations own petard – as Greece and more lately Germany have shown – as their peoples contaminated with the virus of anti-Americanism, that was so virulently propagated by their former political leaders and cultural elites, would frustrate such a desire. It’s for these important reasons therefore, that it would be a stupendous folly of any Administration of the US to believe that its strategy against Iran would be endorsed or supported by the above countries. However, this reasoning does not apply to nations with modicum means of power, as exemplified by many eastern European nations liberated from the Soviet Union’s bondage, as well as of nations which were forced to be parts of the USSR, and whose peoples overwhelmingly tend to have amicable feelings toward the United States. Furthermore, they realize that by being allies of America, the latter can protect their interests from the pressures and incursions of their more powerful neighbors, such as Russia and Germany. It’s no surprise therefore that some of the Eastern European countries, such as Poland, are deploying their troops in Iraq alongside the Americans.

The corollary of the above problematic, i.e., the lack of a diplomatic consensus between the US and the major nations of Europe and China, is that conventional diplomacy in this confrontation between the intransigent leadership of Iran and the leaderships of the US and the EU, cannot play a crucial role in stopping Iran from accumulating nuclear weapons. Hence, the US will be compelled tragically to use the cruel and violent means of war against Iran if it’s seriously concerned that Ahmadinejad armed with nuclear weapons will be a real and a deadly threat to Western civilization. But while “consensus diplomacy” will be absent, diplomacy will not cease, as it will be replaced by the “soloist” hyperactive and bellicose diplomacy of the Americans. While the date of the latter’s military attack against Iran will not be identified, the reality of such an attack will be forcefully announced by the US government, so that it will leave no doubt about its consummation in the hearing of the Iran leadership. However, before such an attack occurs, this “armed diplomacy” of the US will make quite clear to the Ahmadinejad regime that it will not only be targeting its nuclear plants, but, also, its political, religious, and military leadership aiming at its elimination. This “kiss of death” diplomacy forcefully pressed on the foreheads of this triangular leadership of Iran has a great potential of sowing the seeds of division in its ranks with the result of ousting the radicals of Ahmadinejad and replace them with moderates, who would be keen to accept the injunctions of this armed diplomacy.

Thus, a “palace revolt” against the theocratic regime could be instigated by means of diplomacy. And usher regime change in the most peaceful way. Of course, such diplomacy will not attract the support of the “ballet tip-toeing” nations of Europe. But this will not be an obstacle to the resolute leadership of the Bush administration. And the latter will obtain the backing of the coalition of the willing, which will be adequate on this high stakes issue. The probability of achieving this peaceful transformation of regime change is far from being a long shot. But if uncertainty, that rules in the affairs of mankind and beyond, uncannily plays its mischievous role and negates this probability, then there will be no other option for the Bush administration but to adhere to its “original principle of pre-emption”, to quote the British historian Niall Ferguson. The US will have no other option but to attack both Iran’s nuclear plants and its three-tier leadership.

It’s a terrible and tragic burden for any president to carry on his shoulders. But this is the price that statesmanship must pay in this most dangerous of times. Emanating from the coupling of terrorists and rogue theocratic states armed with nuclear weapons.

The article was written on March 10, 2006, and was sent to President Bush on the same date.

Multiculturalism:How a Pet Idea Became a Dinosaur

Con George-Kotzabasis

Once upon a time an amateurish “astrologer” by the name Al Grasby, who happened also to be Minister of Immigration, discovered accidentally, in the Australian firmament of immigration a new star:the Star of Multiculturalism. Al was a man who had a lot of “pets”, “lay” ideas, but this one was going to be a whopper. Within a decade, it would become for wave upon wave of migrants who landed and settled in this country, their lodestar. It would provide guidance and solace for the travails they would endure in the initial stages of settlement, as well as give the celestial energy by which they would cultivate their cultures in their new homeland.

No one had suspected that this discovery of our amateur astrologer was from its beginnings a Fata Morgana and that before the end of the second decade of its chequered existence it would be a falling star. The idea that lay behind the discovery was magnanimous and filled to the brim with the ideals of humanity and the spirit of tolerance. But, like all ideas with such pe(t)digree it was impregnated with the seeds of its own destruction at its conception. This, however, was unbeknown even to its eminent founding fathers, who had spent, with such profligacy, prodigious amounts of corporeal and spiritual energy to give it wings. And it must have been a dolorous and painful experience for them to see that all that their huge efforts had led to was the tragedy of Icarus. But it would not be the first time in history that frivolity in the form of a pet idea would have had such an ending.

It would be stating the obvious to describe Australia as a country whose people are of an exotic provenance. However, to transform a descriptive term into a socio-cultural value, with which migrants would nurture and uphold their cultures in this country for the long duration, as well as transmit them to their progeny, would be an exercise in intellectual alchemy. To have believed that Australia, uniquely, could become a multicultural society was quixotic.

According to its founders, multiculturalism would not only encourage the cultivation and secure the continuation of this rich diversity of cultures, but it would also contribute to the creation of a uniquely tolerant society. In both of these two admirable aims, multiculturalism would be found to be wanting. The achievement of these grandiose aims was based on the premise that Australia somehow was chosen, by some sort of divine predestination, to break itself from the vise of history.

Professor Jerzy Zubrzycki, one of the intellectual founders of multiculturalism, who since has abandoned it, asks the historically germane question regarding the concept of “Many Cultures One Australia”, as proposed by the Centenary of Federation Advisory Committee for the year 2000:“…can it represent a victory over the divisive atavism which has cursed the human experience for so long?” In other words, was it ever conceptually plausible that multiculturalism, or any of its variations, would exorcise this “curse” of history and function as equal before the cascading force of the culture of modern capitalism?

No lesser figure than Karl Marx, whom some of the protagonists of multiculturalism would be proud to consider as their mentor, predicted that the elemental force of capitalism and its culture would sweep away, on a vast scale, the dead weight of traditions and cultures that riveted their peoples to the obfuscation, ignorance, and bigotry of a hoary past. How could anyone be oblivious of the fact that the Darwinian natural selection process of the biological world also applies, with some modifications, in the cultural world, by means very often, of a ruthless competition of cultures, whose crown of victory ineluctably passes to the head of the stronger culture and to the one that is most suitable to the needs and aspirations of people living in a particular society? How could anyone with a modicum of knowledge of human history, disregard the “sanguine” fact that most wars were, whatever their other causes, at the same time wars of different cultures and religious beliefs? Even when there happened to be wars of the same culture, it was a conflict between different interpretation of beliefs, as the Thirty Year War between Protestants and Catholics in the seventeenth century illustrated. In view of the above, one must have had the “courage” of ignorance, to have considered and proposed the possibility of a multicultural Australia.

As to its laudatory goals of tolerance between different cultures and their flourishing within the strongly-established mainstream of Anglo-Saxon culture, to what extent are these goals feasible? There is no doubt that Australia has an exemplary record in its tolerance of different cultures. The strong sense of egalitarianism introduced into Australia by the early colonists, an array of judicious governmental and educational policies, and the experience of an expanding tourism in and out of Australia have combined to imbue Australians, despite some pockets of bigoted obscurantism, with a strong sense of respect and acceptance of foreign cultures.

ETHNIC CONFLICTS WITHIN AUSTRALIA

But whilst the host culture can be genial and tolerant, one cannot say the same for the “metic” cultures. The tolerance of cultures, like the characters of persons, are tested and adjudged in critical and difficult circumstances. Conflicts and historical hatreds between Arabs and Jews, between Greeks and Serbo-Macedonians, between Serbs, Bosnians, and Croats, between Turks and Kurds, have been transplanted into this country. The extent to which these conflicts can mobilize these hostile communities against each other and induce them to lobby governments in support of their countries, furnishes a striking example that multiculturalism and its ideals are a mirage.

What is more disturbing, however, is that governments, for electoral reasons, can become hostages to the “blackmailing” demands of certain ethnic communities, who have the advantage of numbers. Hence, governments in Australia can become unofficial allies of certain countries which are embroiled in hostilities, or even in war, through the pressure resident communities can exercise upon them. The reality, therefore, is that leading organizations of ethnic communities, whose countries back home are engaged in hostilities or war, can become surrogate diplomatic corps, negotiating and acting on behalf of the interests of their own countries with Australian governments.

It’s obvious therefore, that a nation under the umbrella of a multicultural society, cannot be protected from the thunderbolts cast by the atavistic wrath that some nations have against each other. The idea of a multicultural society, from the day of its inception, was child’s play, building castles in the sand. It was an idea that should be stillborn. But, due to a mushrooming crop of ethnic communities and councils along with their leaders’ adeptness to coax and seduce politicians and governments, who felt that in return for their political favours they would be rewarded with the ethnic vote, it continued to flourish. Thus it was that ethnic community leaders were able to ensconce themselves within the precincts of political power. As a result of governments’ willingness, especially that of Labour, to adopt and implement many of the schemes of the supporters of multiculturalism, a swarm of drones and mediocrities, both from the ethnic and Anglo-Saxon communities, invaded and captured ministerial and departmental positions, which were cast as the incubators from which would rise the policies of multiculturalism.

The Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA), in the Prime Minister’s office under the Hawke government, was the hatchery par excellence. Thus came into existence the teeming breed of the “professional ethnic”. To solidify the hold they had upon governments, they needed to have the “august” voices of academia speaking in favour of their multicultural proposals. And for those multiculturalists who entered the universities and upon whom some benign force allotted them professorial chairs, Plato’s proviso for his academia, that no person without knowledge of mathematics should enter here, did not apply. It was not surprising, therefore, that nothing profound emerged from those noisy, creaking wobbly chairs. Moreover, few academics– with some exceptions, like the courageous professor Blainey–would dare to “pluck the wings” off this flock of intellectual usurpers. Even today, despite the abandonment of the concept of multiculturalism by such eminent persons as professor Zubrzycki and Justice Gobbo, cackles about multiculturalism still can be heard in, and out of, the rooms of academia.

THE FOUR PRINCIPLES OF MULTICULTURALISM

The Gordian knot of multiculturalism was tied by its four principles, as outlined by the Australian Council of Population and Ethnic Affairs:’essential for a successful multicultural society were social cohesion; respect for cultural identity and awareness of Australian’s cultural diversity; equal opportunity and access for all Australians; and equal responsibility for, commitment to, and participation in Australian Society. The achievement of each of these principles however, depends on the acceptance of the social, economic, political, and philosophical values of Australian society, i.e. the cultural values of an advanced technological democratic society. But many of the cultures of our ethnically diverse population do not espouse these values. Therefore, if those four basic principles were to be realized, these cultures would have to debunk a great chunk of their own values and adopt the values of Australian society. Ironically, the realization of these four basic principles would not lead to a multicultural society, but to a society of one dominant culture, which fits the requirements of a modern society, with moderate variations, however, in its original cultural milieu. As through a syncretic process, the home grown culture will absorb the best that other cultures have to offer, but like a river with many currents, it will be the mainstream, the stronger current, that will determine the meandering course of its direction. It’s certainly correct to believe that the diversity of cultures enriches the experience and enlightens the minds of people. But it’s erroneous to believe that you can build a society or a nation on a medley of cultures.

Al Grasby’s pet idea was destined to have a transitory, but nonetheless, a grotesque existence, for it was written in its star that it would share the fate of the dinosaur.

The article was first written and published in the IPA Review (Institute Of Public Affairs) Vol. 49/2 1996

AVERTING A POLITICALLY WET AUSTRALIA

Con George-Kotzabasis

The leader of the Opposition Kim Beazley, after reading selectively the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report that the war in Iraq had become a cause celebre for Jihadists, announced that if he would become Prime Minister he would withdraw the troops from Iraq. Such announcement does not, as Foreign Minister Downer hinted, replace the Australian flag with the white flag it replaces the Australian flag with Beazley’s “wet pants”.

The unclassified report of the NIE that was released by the Bush administration has more positives than negatives for the Administration. As Michael Costello, a former advisor to Beazley, argues in his piece in The Australian on September 29, 06, the report supports Bush’s policy of establishing democracy in the Middle East as well as his determination not to withdraw US troops from Iraq prematurely. The NIE states clearly that ‘should Jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.’ And the report continues, that ‘perceived jihad success in Iraq would inspire more fighters to continue the fight elsewhere’. (m.e.) Hence, the defeat of the insurgents in Iraq and the establishment of nascent democracy in the country are pivotal to the defeat of terrorists in other regions including our own.

Beazley’s withdrawal of our troops from Iraq would therefore invigorate and exacerbate the threat of terror in our region. And with two hundred and thirty millions Muslims as neighbors and the strengthening of Jemal Islamiyah within Indonesia, Australia would face a “massively” implacable enemy in our region. It would also increase the internal threat rising from the enemy within, whose fanaticism will induce many of its recruits to become holy warriors against the infidel Australians. Hence Beazley’s policy of withdrawal from Iraq would increase by an astronomical order the danger to Australia, especially when soon the Jihadists might be armed with weapons of mass destruction, if not with portable nuclear weapons. Moreover, our troops fighting an invisible more confident and tougher enemy in our region will bear enormous casualties in the hundreds, if not in thousands, and the war budget will reach unheard of heights without end in sight. And once again Australia will require its ally America, whom a Beazley government had abandoned in Iraq, to extricate it from an endless war that Australia cannot win without the military support and deployment of US forces. All this will happen by the courtesy of the thin emaciated will, spirit, and imagination of Beazley.

But will the public buy the shoddy, deficient strategic nous of this wet merchant of politics, Kim Beazley, at the next federal elections that will place Australia in this engulfing peril?