💧Mary Kostakidis@MaryKostakidis
*******Brilliant Andrew Brown. A gutsy principled Australian.
‘Name the war for what it is. Say it plainly, in public, without diplomatic hedging. Illegal. Unjustified. Conducted in violation of the international legal framework that Australia claims as a cornerstone of its foreign policy. Say it to your MP. Say it at your workplace. Say it in the letters you write to newspapers that have not said it themselves. The first act of any movement worth the name is the refusal to accept the sanitised language of the people responsible for the thing being named.'
'These are the people responsible. Blame them. By name. Publicly. Specifically. Without the false balance that treats accountability as extremism.'
'Shame the government that called a genocide concerning for eighteen months and then called the next war constructive. Shame the press that covered the economic consequences of an illegal war without once naming the war as the cause. Shame the political class that invokes the rules-based international order at every opportunity except the specific, concrete moment when invoking it might cost them something with Washington. And shame the lobby infrastructure that has made honest public discussion of Israeli state conduct so professionally dangerous that elected representatives self-censor in real time, on camera, in ways they would never do on any other topic involving any other government.'
'Concretely, that means demanding the following from your MP, from candidates seeking your vote, from any politician who wants to claim the mantle of representing the Australian people.
Formally condemn the US-Israeli war on Iran as a violation of international law and call for an immediate ceasefire and negotiated settlement. Honour the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Netanyahu. State clearly, as sovereign Australian policy, that a man under international indictment for war crimes is not a partner to be accommodated but a defendant to be treated as the court’s warrant requires.
Establish and publish an independent economic inquiry into the full cost to Australian households and businesses of this conflict, with clear attribution, so that every Australian knows exactly what they are paying and exactly why. Suspend all defence and intelligence cooperation that makes Australia complicit in operations it did not approve, and that would not survive public scrutiny if disclosed.
And tell Washington, firmly, as a matter of principle and sovereign policy rather than private diplomatic discomfort, that this alliance has terms. And one of those terms is that you do not commit Australia to your wars without consent and then leave Australians to absorb the damage. These are not radical demands.'
michaelwest.com.au/name-it-blame-…
