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Letters to the Editor:

New US policy to block freedom of the seas

Not content with gobbling up Afghanistan and Iraq, US President George W 
Bush is marshalling another "coalition of the willing" to shadow the 
world's oceans in search of weapons of mass destruction.

Within weeks the recently established 11-nation Proliferation Security 
Initiative will conduct military exercises over wide areas of the Pacific, 
including seas and airspace adjacent to Australia.

Joining the US initiative are Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, 
Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Spain.

According to Washington arms control official John R Bolton, the plan is to 
intercept ships and aircraft suspected of carrying unconventional weapons.

North Korean shipping is clearly in the PSI's sights, although Iran has 
been mentioned as another potential threat.

Targeted are chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and components. The 
ambit is so wide that virtually anything of value to the intelligences 
services in the "War on Terror" in any form or any carrier could be 
intercepted.

China has thus far rejected an invitation to join the initiative, 
questioning its legality.

In peacetime, international law prohibits arbitrary search of vessels on 
the high seas, although in recent times numerous incidents have resulted 
from boarding of such vessels as the Norwegian ship Tampa.

Other maritime nations may be reluctant to set precedents that could affect 
world trade and freedom of the seas.

How did the United States hatch this potentially illegal policy without its 
usual spin in the world media?

The concept was first broached by President Bush at two meetings held in 
May with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and South Korean 
President Roh Moo Hyun — all concerned over North Korea's revived nuclear 
weapons program.

In early June, having declared victory in Iraq, President Bush met with 
Group of 8 leaders in France. In the background, White House aides cobbled 
together a coalition of European nations concerned over intelligence from 
North Korea and Iran.

A week later, North Korea protested the policy of intensive inspections and 
suspended its ferry service with Japan, concerned over interruption of its 
fishing fleet.

At the Association of South East Asian Nations and Asian Regional Forum 
held in Cambodia on 18 June US Secretary of State, Colin Powell sought 
broad support for an international plan to interdict shipments of nuclear 
materials and other weapons of mass destruction. Alarmed over North Korean 
drug smuggling efforts, Australia has other motives to strongly support the 
proposed coalition.

By July plans were underway to step up pressure on North Korea by 
conducting a joint naval/air PSI training exercises in the Coral Sea off 
Australia in September.

According to a September 4 report by Reuters, arms control officer Bolton 
denied nations taking part in PSI would be breaking international law. He 
said participants had agreed to guidelines limiting how they would carry 
out ship and aircraft interceptions.

"What we intend to do is consistent with national and international 
authorities", Bolton reported to Reuters.

"Where we think we may have gaps in that authority, we are willing to 
consider seeking additional authorization", he said, alluding to possible 
approval from the United Nationals Security Council.

Already, forces of Australia, United States, Japan and France are moving 
into position to simulate land, sea and air interceptions.

France confirmed its military commitment in a statement from its foreign 
ministry on September 6.

On the eve of September 11 Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer 
announced in parliament that PSI training exercises are soon to begin.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Proliferation Security 
Initiative is enlarging the US war on terror to include the seas, spanning 
more than three-fifths of the Earth.

The potential for conflict is alarming.

Rasjad Moore
Fremantle, WA

Today Tonight (Channel 7, 11/9/03) commemorated the terrorist 
attack on the US by looking at the effect it has had on Australians since 
that event. Instead of the expected syrupy interview with an assortment of 
sombre and spiritually reflective Aussies, the piece went on to list one 
after another the commodities that have increased in sales after September 
11 — and, the program suggests, as a direct result of the terrorist 
attack.

I suggest that perhaps Australians were confused by the American term 
"9/11" which has been taken up by our Australian media and mistakenly 
thought they meant the 7-11. The thought that the temple of Western 
consumerism, the local convenience store, could be the target of terrorists 
— have they no compassion? — has apparently struck fear into the hearts 
of Australians and sparked an unprecedented spending spree.

Today Tonight informed us that since September 11, Australians have 
been enjoying more holidays, buying more homes, more cars and dining out 
more often — as assessed by increased sales in all those areas.

One implication of this is, perhaps, that, living in a "Western" country 
(i.e. wealthy capitalist country where lifestyle and happiness is based on, 
and measured by, the consumption of products) Australians sought to escape 
from the overdose of reality that September 11 injected via the television 
into their living rooms. That escapism offered itself in the already 
familiar form of consumption.

The consumer-lifestyle mentality rests on a dream (false belief) that 
merely through buying a lot of the right kind of products, freedom and 
happiness can be achieved. Many Australians who had felt secure in their 
consumer lifestyle, felt a lot less secure in both freedom and happiness 
after September 11.

In response, they have dived even deeper into the pool of consumerism in 
order to drown out unsettling and disturbing ugliness of reality from the 
outside world — that "other" world of misery and conflict that exists 
outside of, far away and detached from the safe haven of the consumer-
lifestyle dream.

Yes, to drown out a disquieting voice that is saying that their insular 
"perfect" lifestyle which they have constructed for themselves, without 
feeling too guilty about the way wealthy countries make their wealth in the 
first place from the world's poor countries; the Western consumer lifestyle 
sported by the rich and famous and aspired to in some degree by most 
ordinary Westerners, may be less like a certainty and a given and more like 
a falsified, constructed dream advertised to all, but only affordable to a 
minority of the world's population — those who have the privilege of 
wealth to purchase their escape into this dreamworld.

For the rest of the world's population, misery and conflict are part of the 
reality they can't escape from.

Rohan Gowland
Newtown, NSW

As television and the print media file their stories about the 
continuing war against terror since September 11, two years ago in New 
York, and the day of infamy in Chile for the Left of 30 years ago, it would 
seem all doom and gloom for the future of humankind.

However, there is an antithesis to this terrorism against the West and the 
West's response to it with increased oppression, repression and 
surveillance.

It is to remember the contribution to social, political and cultural 
thought of Frankfurt School theorist and writer Theodor Adorno who was born 
in Germany 100 years ago on September 11, 1903.

Adorno wrote several books which sought to critically examine the art, 
culture and scientific thought of the Western world, which he argued, were 
sinking humanity into, "a new kind of barbarism". In his most celebrated 
work, The Dialectic of Enlightenment, co-written with Max Horkheimer 
in 1947, the barbarism referred to is not inflicted by the ruling class 
elites, but by a new technological consciousness which has gripped mass 
society.

To resist the influence which this technological consciousness has on our 
lives, Adorno wrote that man needs to be wary of not seeking normative and 
practical explanation at the expense of philosophical reflection.

While Adorno was no darling of either the Left who accused him of being an 
ivory tower intellectual or the Right which accused him of being a 
pessimist and anti-American (Adorno lived from 1938 to 1949 in the USA), 
there is a persistence of Adorno's thinking and ideas amongst those for 
whom the good life, true liberty and a just society are not just a utopian 
dream.

Richard Titelius
Ballajura, WA