John Howard
| John Howard link (Politician) | |
|---|---|
| File:John howard.png | |
| Born | John Winston Howard 1939-07-26 Earlwood, New South Wales, Australia |
| Alma mater | Canterbury Boys' High School, University of Sydney |
| Religion | Anglicanism |
| Children | 3 |
| Spouse | Janette Parker |
| Party | Liberal Party of Australia |
Prime Minister of Australia 1996-2007 | |
2003 Iraq Invasion
John Howard was leading Australia as the third accomplice in the 2003 attack on Iraq. While George W. Bush and Tony Blair to some extent were discredited by the illegal invasion and preceding propaganda campaigns[1] about "Iraq's WMDs", John Howard, as Australian PM and third partner in the war coalition, escaped this public opprobrium.Template:Cn
As part of the justification of the war, Howard in March 2003 spread the lie about an alleged human shredding machine used by the Iraqis, an tool for putting to death critics of Saddam Hussein. A week earlier, Howard mentioned other lurid stories: "We're talking about a regime that will gouge out the eyes of a child to force a confession from the child's parents. This is a regime that will burn a person's limbs ... that, in 2000, decreed the crime of criticising it would be punished by the amputation of tongues."[2]
The government TV channel Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) was used to spread around the world a television interview with Adnand al-Haideri, a defector who claimed he had worked at illegal chemical, biological and nuclear facilities around Baghdad, claims that later were exposed as lies. The interview was made by Paul Moran, a spook who worked for the Rendon Group but used freelancing for the ABC as cover.
Children Overboard affair and the sinking of SIEV X
- Full articles: Children Overboard affair, SIEV X
- Full articles: Children Overboard affair, SIEV X
The "Children Overboard affair" was a central focus in the 2001 federal election campaign, when John Howard was accused of cynically demonizing asylum-seekers. Howard and senior ministers falsely claimed on the eve of the election that a boat of (mostly Iraqi) asylum-seekers had thrown their children into the water to guarantee their rescue by the Australian navy. When challenged about this, Howard said that the refugees "don't carry any visible signs of being demonised".[3] The following parliamentary inquiry was stonewalled and lied to.
SIEV X was the name assigned by Australian authorities to an Indonesian fishing boat carrying over 400 asylum seekers en route to Australia, which capsized in international waters with around 400 deaths 19 October 2001. SIEV stands for Suspected Irregular Entry Vessel and is the acronym used by the surveillance authority for any boat that has entered Australian waters without prior authorisation. While presented as an tragedy caused by greedy people smugglers, the real story is probably a carefully stage-managed psychological operation, including a deliberately foreseen sinking in a "disruption program", arranged by Indonesian proxies of the Australian government, in order to put pressure on the Indonesian government to make people-smuggling illegal.
Australia/VIPaedophile
In 2019, former prime minister John Howard described Cardinal Australia/VIPaedophile George Pell as "a person of both high intelligence and exemplary character" and said his conviction on child sexual abuse charges doesn’t "alter my opinion of the Cardinal" in a character reference. Howard was one of 10 people to submit a character reference to Melbourne’s county court during a sentencing hearing after Pell was found guilty of five counts of child sexual abuse. He said he had known Pell for 30 years and that he is a "person of both high intelligence and exemplary character, and that Pell was a "lively conversationalist who maintains a deep and objective interest in contemporary social and political issues."[4]
