Howard lies to bomb victim

Political expediency plumbed new depths with Australian Prime Minister John Howard lying to a London bombing victim on prime time TV about the nature of the attack.

Claiming beyond belief that the attack was not associated with the allegedly unlawful invasion and occupation of Iraq despite an avalanche of claims to the contrary, Howard's meander with fairies in a bungled media beat-up invites alarm over the quality of his leadership.

Pounding salt into the victim's wounds in an act of deliberate bastadry at a joint press conference with British PM Tony Blair following the hospital visit, Howard officially denied that the policies of the Australian, British and US governments on Iraq had anything to do with the July 7 London suicide bombings, or with any other acts or threats of terrorism against US, British or Australian nationals.

Few believe Howard's tawdry political lie that the war in Iraq has not increased the threat of terrorist violence.

Chicago University professor Richard Pape, for instance, who has conducted a study of 462 suicide terrorists from around the world since 1980, in an interview aired on ABC TV's 7.30 Report, rejects the view that suicide terrorism is mainly driven by an 'evil ideology' of hatred for the 'Western way of life' in favour of the view, as reported in the Green-Left Weekly, that "terrorist attacks by Muslims against US, British and Australian nationals are driven by anger against their governments' military interventions into territories the terrorists see as part of the Muslim world."

Clearly Howard should be removed from any responsibility over Australia's security as a matter of national urgency.

The ideological war on terror between moderates and extremists in the denial of women's rights will be won when women achieve equal rights with men.

The only solution to end all prospect extremists might have of pursuading moderates to their cause with whatever means is to grant women equal rights in the form of a republic comprising women's and men's legislatures presided over by an executive of elders accompanied by courts of women's and men's jurisdiction.

There is no other solution.