TOP CRIMS of the 20th Century

What does it take for the media, the people's "Window to the world!", to get on the case of those behind the wars of the 20th century and the aftermaths still to manifest? We've had 70 years of de-classified documentation on the shananagans got up to in seven decades of "spy games". Can none of us add-up?

With what's come out in the papers lately ie., in "The Australian", (27/3/2000 pp8) "BP oiled coup with cash, claim Turks", about British Petroleum (BP) and Amoco in cahoots with good old MI-6 in 1993, to win the oil fields of Azerbaijan through corruption, subversion, installation of a puppet president, and military arms-for-oil deals, questions must be asked about the relationships between the big commercial players and the imperialist government's foreign agents.
Also in "The Guardian Weekly" (10/2/2000 pp11) "Briton gets life for Indian arms drop", we find a report of a British Agent getting life for an illegal arms drop of 500 AK-47 rifles, 250k of ammo, 12 rocket launchers and 100 anti-tank grenades to the Indian Ananda Marga cult in Dec '95. Surely we're obliged to inquire;
"How much of a hand have those disreputable organisations (BP, Amoco and MI6, et al) and their sporting corporate opponents had in all the wars large-and-small of the 20th Century?"
I read that 30,000 people died in the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Small beer to WWI or WWII (over 30 million in WWII alone!). But who should shoulder the blame, in the face of the evidence?

I do muse about the winners always judging the losers, yet the "winners" seem to escape charges and convictions of war crimes, which they have always excelled at carrying out.

I've learnt well how inhumane, wealth makes people. BP and British Intelligence, both at the top of the pile, go well together it seems, to ruthlessly play God and bring about the slaughter of any number of innocent Azers, or Kurds or Nigerians (or was that Shell?) for the sake of winning the filthy booty.

I used to say that business is just a gentrified version of war.

Oh how naive I was!

I look back on what we know about the 20th Century and ask "which war of the last 100 years was not engineered by business interests similar (if not the same) as British Petroleum's etc?"

I've no doubt that a huge proportion of the conflicts which ravaged the globe over the last 100 years, had their genesis in the boardrooms of the likes of just such oil and mineral mining companies.

Were a dedicated reporter, an investigative journalist, to quantify the damages done to third world peoples, to the environment, to the life expectancy on Earth, over the last 100 years, and of course to the peoples of Europe and Asia, during the two world wars, by private financial interests, and publish the findings , I think many True Believers would be most pleasantly surprised in the renewed popularity of a leftwing ethical, indeed Spiritual Communist Party.

If anyone was unclear as to why our "a-a-a, i-i-i, oo-oo-oo", Prime Minister refuses to apologise to the Aborigines, consider the flow-on effects to the Poms having to bear some responsibility, and further, to what might follow in the manner of necessary apologies, reconciliation and remuneration from every other colonialist, imperialist nation to every plundered Indigenous nation and culture around the world?

I think it's time we addressed such issues, everywhere, in keeping with our own attempts at an apology to the Aborigines and Reconciliation, because these two local subjects have their seeds in a far bigger, far more fundamental social and economic problem, which pervades perhaps the greater part of all recorded western history, perhaps as far back as (Christian interpretations of) Eve and Adam's fall from Grace in Eden.

Of course the Euros and Poms would insist their own judges sit presiding over any hearings and trials.

I suggest a court room presided over by Elders of every Indigenous Nation ever plundered by gubbas.

Considering what we now know about how rotten British Justice is, Australians, if we are not racist, and want a Just and Peacful world for the kids, can never again regard the British aristocracy and it's institutions as trustworthy allies.

I suggest we have no alternative but to sever diplomatic and trade relations with Britain, pending a full "Royal" Commission into Britain's involvement in the wars of the 20th Century, as uncovered by the newspaper report on Azerbaijan and BP, Amoco and MI6.

Of course were I saying this with tongue-in-cheek, it still serves to point up the extent of the "Apology" problem we have here in Australia.

How far back do we go? Where do we begin, or, where does the problem begin?

Indeed, one is brought to ask whether all the disputes around the world today; Northern Ireland, Zimbabwe, Palestine, Chechnya, Nigeria, Eritrea, Kosovo, Aceh, India/Pakistan, the Solomon Islands, West Papua, Bougainville etc., have their genesis in the same failures in western corporate consumers to conquere their own materialistic desires?

And how desirous have the British been of late, to avoid facing up to their responsibilities?