Editorial:

Silencing dissent

The severe attack on those opposed to the policies of the Federal 
Government and their determination to silence dissent has been demonstrated 
by the attack on Andrew Wilkie and on the ABC by leading federal Ministers 
and by PM John Howard himself.

The daily newspapers and the commentaries by some extreme right-wing 
columnists such as Gerard Henderson have added to the attacks on Wilkie and 
the ABC.

Wilkie's crime is that he blew the whistle on the lies being told by Howard 
and his Government in their attempts to justify the invasion and occupation 
of Iraq by the US, Britain and Australia.

Apart from all other considerations, the fact is that no weapons of mass 
destruction have been found in Iraq and even the investigators appointed 
directly by the US Government did not find any weapons. The publication of 
the report that this team was to have made has been postponed indefinitely, 
yet again confirming that the huge propaganda campaign was based on 
monstrous lies.

Andrew Wilkie declared as early as March that the claims of the Howard 
Government were "exaggerated, skewed, used selectively and fabricated". 
Personal abuse and denunciations have been heaped on him ever since in an 
attempt to discredit him and his exposure. He is being attacked, not 
because his claims were false but because he was telling the truth.

In the most recent attempt, a Liberal Party member who was part of the 
Senate inquiry into the "sexed up" propaganda claims of the Government, was 
provided with and used secret intelligence information. The publication of 
security information is a crime under federal law. Defence Minister Robert 
Hill admitted that the Liberal Senator concerned had been briefed by the 
Defence Department before Andrew Wilkie was to give evidence to the 
inquiry. Alexander Downer, the Minister for Foreign Affairs has refused to 
deny that his office had seen a top-secret report in the days before it was 
leaked at the inquiry.

As part of a smear campaign a WA Senator, David Johnston said Mr Wilkie was 
"very unstable, is unreliable and is flaky and irrational". Not to be out-
done the neo-fascist and arch anti-communist Gerard Henderson wrote of 
Wilkie's "media-choreographed resignation from the Office of National 
Assessments".

But Wilkie is absolutely right and his claims are fully confirmed by the 
total failure of the investigators to find a single weapon of mass 
destruction in Iraq.

If the character assassins are so sure of their assertions, why doesn't the 
Australian Government have an open inquiry in the same terms as the Hutton 
inquiry in Britain?

On another front, it was Liberal Senator Alston who alleged that the ABC 
had displayed an anti-American bias in its coverage of the Iraq conflict 
only to have all but two of his 68 complaints rejected by an ABC inquiry.

The treatment of Wilkie and attack on the ABC are two examples of how the 
Government is determined to push its line and silence any attempts to 
question it. In the first example, it attempted to silence an insider who 
is in a position to know the truth about the Howard Government's assertions 
and in the case of the ABC, to intimidate and silence the independent voice 
of our public broadcaster.

The Howard Government represents the interests of the big corporations who 
are the real, but minority, ruling class in Australia. They will take any 
measure to retain their economic and political power and are in the process 
of taking away the democratic rights that have been won and established in 
Australia over the last 100 years or more.

They have already provided themselves with the "legal" means by which to 
persecute all opposition by given sweeping powers to the police and so-
called "security" organisations to arrest and jail those they consider to 
be a threat to their power and control.

Not only are the people of the world being threatened with endless war but 
also with fascist-type laws which have the aim of silencing dissent so that 
no voice and no opinion other than that of the ruling class is heard in 
Australia.