Justice Branson
pointed out that the relevant Racial Hatred Bill “requires an objective
test to be applied by the Commission so that community standards of
behaviour rather than the subjective views of the complainant are taken into
account”.
There is no
reason to doubt that she was following the law as she perceived it, but
there is good reason to fear that the law itself is deficient. On such
complicated matters as were before her, the opinions of “the man in the
street” are worthless. The average person is simply too ignorant to have a
valid and useful opinion. This is the more the case when one considers the
shocking gullibility of modern mass man to suggestion by the major media.
Indeed, there is very good reason to suspect that the same Money Power which
has pressed for racial vilification laws in many countries around the world,
has had undue influence on legislatures (including the Australian
Parliament) and possesses undue power over the mass media.
It is in this
sense that I see Dr Töben as in fact the victims of a
skilfully wielded political nutcracker. Thus I do not place the same
significance on parliamentary debates as did Justice Branson when in Section
107 she commented: “The debate as to whether the Racial Discrimination Act
should proscribe offensive behaviour motivated by race, colour or national
or ethnic origin, and the extent to which it should do so, was conducted in
the Australian Parliament by the democratically elected representatives of
the Australian people.”
I am unconvinced
that such debates really represent either the conscious wishes of the
electorate or their real interests. And, as noted above, the electorate is
often grossly misled by the major media.
Justice Branson
conceded that “there is no direct evidence that any person was offended,
insulted, humiliated or intimidated” by the material to which the
plaintiff objected, but pointed out that, under the law, such evidence is
not necessary. “The court must make an objective assessment itself of what
is reasonably likely.”
She explained
how this assessment was to be made: “It is the test of reasonableness
which guides any court in its function of determining whether the matter
complained of is capable of conveying any of the imputations pleaded by the
plaintiff.” The court must estimate “what the ordinary reasonable
reader, listener or viewer (drawing on his or her own knowledge and
experience of human affairs) could understand from what the defendant has
said in the matter complained of.”
In Section 89
Justice Branson also pointed out that “it is not for the Court in a case
of this kind to seek to determine whether or not the Holocaust occurred.”
Her role was to decide whether the plaintiff had substantiated his complaint
that the defendant “engaged in conduct rendered unlawful by Section 18C of
the Racial Discrimination Act”. However, she added that it was appropriate
to note “that it is generally accepted in Australia and elsewhere that the
Holocaust did occur.”
Justice Branson
proceeded to make her subsequent findings on that basis. While she may well
have followed the letter of the law scrupulously, it seems clear that in
fact those findings were her subjective assessment based on her
awareness of the subjective and largely uninformed, if not misinformed,
views of the public.
A reader who
doubts this might like to study the discussion of subjectivity and
objectivity based on the philosophy of Kant, in P D Ouspensky’s Tertium
Organum.
The Court’s Findings
Justice
Branson sensibly accepted a legal precedent that to offend, insult,
humiliate or intimidate “are profound and serious effects, not to be
likened to mere slights”. Her first important finding is stated in Section
93, as follows:
“The applicant
gave evidence that the Australian Jewish community has the highest
percentage of survivors of the Holocaust of any Jewish community in the
world outside of Israel. Each of the first two imputations identified in Section 88 above thus challenges and denigrates
a central aspect of the shared perception of Australian Jewry of its
own modern history and the circumstances in which many of its members came
to make their lives in Australia rather than in Europe. To the extent that
the material conveys these imputations it is, in my view, more probable than
not that it would engender feelings of hurt and pain in the living by reason
of its challenge to deep seated belief as to the circumstances surrounding
the deaths, or the displacement, of their parents or grandparents. For the
same reason, I am satisfied that it is more probable than not that the
material would engender in Jewish Australians a sense of being treated
contemptuously, disrespectfully and offensively.”
A number of
observations are pertinent in response. In the first place it is regrettable
that the term ‘Holocaust’ has not been defined in the course of the
case. It is possible to accept that death and great suffering was unjustly
visited on very large numbers of Jews under the Nazi regime, without
believing in the ‘gas chambers’ claims. Such treatment of the Jews could
still fairly be labelled a holocaust; and a person holding such a position
could not fairly be called a Holocaust denier, though certainly a Holocaust
revisionist.
My current
impression is that Dr Töben in fact holds such a position.
It is regrettable that his material objected to included Dr Robert
Faurisson’s laconic comment: ‘No holes, no Holocaust’. He invited
misunderstanding. I am not sure that Justice Branson did as much as she
could have done to protect him from such misunderstanding.
There is no
doubt that the relevant imputations ‘challenged’ the relevant
perception, but I see no grounds for the additional claim by Justice Branson
that they “denigrated” it. To me that claim appears to be an obvious non
sequitur and a regrettable evidence of subjectivity. It should be
noted that nowhere in her judgment does she express any concern at all that
the current legislation itself may be worthy of serious question. It may
well be true that “feelings of hurt or pain” might be aroused by
polemical theses challenging deeply held beliefs; but Section 18C does not
protect such feelings. Overall, there seems to be no logical basis for
Justice Branson’s conclusion at the end of Section 93. It nhas been
plucked out of the air.
In Section 94 she stated: “ I am also satisfied
that it is more probable than not that the third and fourth of the
imputations identified above, by reason of their calumnious nature, would
offend, insult, hurt and wound members of Australian Jewry and engender in
them a sense of being treated contemptuously, disrespectfully and
offensively.”
A calumny is a false
accusation. Other definitions of the word depend upon that central fact of
falsity. As regards the claim by Dr Töben
about Jewish critics of his position being “of limited intelligence” and
so on, Justice Branson’s use of the word ‘calumnious’ is valid. That
also happens to be an issue on which ordinary Australians and “community
standards” could validly give an informed opinion.
The same
judgments cannot at all be made as regards her application of the word
‘calumnious’ to the imputation that “some Jewish people, for improper
purposes, including financial gain, have exaggerated the number of Jews
killed during World War Two and the circumstances in which they were
killed.”
This is a
complex historical judgment, which has at times been made by both Jewish and
non-Jewish historians. It is a matter on which the common man could not give
an informed opinion. And Justice Branson’s application of the word
‘calumnious’ to it is completely inconsistent with her remark quoted
above that it was not for the Court to determine whether or not the
Holocaust occurred. She has made a historical claim without having produced
an iota of support for it, a claim that, in any case, is out of place in her
judgment. This appears to me to be a very serious judicial error.
In Section 96
Justice Branson went on to make a series of very questionable assertions, as
follows:
“ … the
publication … would cause damage to the pride and self-respect of
vulnerable members of the Australian Jewish community, such as, for example,
the young and the impressionable.” Such people might “well experience
… pressure to renounce the cultural differences that identify them as part
of the Jewish community. I am satisfied that it is more probable than not
that there are members of the Australian Jewish community who will become
fearful of accessing the World Wide Web to search for information touching
on their Jewish culture because of the risk of insult from the material.”
That is drawing
a very long bow indeed. Surely it is more reasonable to feel that young and
old members of the Jewish community would be more than well fortified to
contemplate Holocaust revisionism on the basis of their knowledge, derived
from family, school and synagogue, of the magnificent traditions of Judaism
and the intellectual achievements of Jews throughout the past four thousand
years. The kind of fearfulness referred to by Justice Branson would surely
be rare and the indicator of a morbidly timorous nature. I argue that her
views here defy common sense.
Citing legal
precedents, Justice Branson proceeded to explain that she would take the
position that “if an act is done for one or more reasons, it is enough
that one of the reasons is the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of
a person or group of people.” For her, the test to be applied was
“whether race is a ‘material factor’ in the performance of the act.”
From this, Justice Branson continued: “It is abundantly clear that race
was a factor in the defendant’s decision to publish the material.”
But is it
really so abundantly clear?
It may well be
that some material published by Dr Töben expressed an
animus against Jewish people generally. That expression is unacceptable and
should be condemned; but it may be explicable by the age-old human
phenomenon of passion aroused in the polemicist. Justice Branson herself
noted in Section 81 that Dr Töben has written: “If I offend anybody
because I show poor taste in my sometimes blunt and honest questioning, then
I apologise.” A more specific apology for past errors might, however, be
more appropriate; and it is a pity that conciliation could not have led to
that result.
However, his
essential reason for mentioning Jews in the material objected to was surely
not their Jewishness, but the anti-social acts of which he believes them
to be guilty. Justice Branson commented in Section 99: “The material
includes many references to Jews and events and people characterized as
Jewish. It is particularly concerned with the Holocaust and with the conduct
of German forces during World War Two, matters of particular importance to
Jewish people. It is, in my view, plainly calculated to convey a message
about Jewish people.” None of this, however, proves anything other than
the fact that Dr Töben
was identifying the particular group of people he feels are engaged
in anti-social behaviour. Such identification does not, surely, ipso facto,
constitute race being a material factor in the material objected to!
If such
identification is not to be allowed, then it will become impossible legally
to make legitimate criticisms of alleged anti-social behaviour by any named
ethnic and/or religious group. It is impossible to believe that the federal
Parliament intended such when it passed the Racial Discrimination Act and
the Racial Hatred Act. It is very surprising that Justice Branson showed
no awareness of this need to distinguish necessary identification
from illicit use of race in published polemics.
Justice Branson
pointed out that a defence available to Dr Töben,
but which he did not avail himself of, is contained in Section 18D(b) of the
Racial Discrimination Act, which states that Section 18C does not render
unlawful “anything done reasonably and in good faith in the course of any
publication made for genuine academic or other genuine purpose in the public
interest.” It is regrettable that Dr Töben
did not plead this defence.
However, it
is even more regrettable that Justice Branson made in Section 101 the
unsupported claim that nothing of the “various material produced to the
Court” by Dr Töben
“established that he relevantly acted in good faith”. I have
known Dr Töben
for many years and read many of his relevant writings. To me, it is obvious
that he has written and published in good faith at all times, though, as I
have noted above, by no means always wisely and courteously. This finding by
Justice Branson arouses misgivings in me as to her possible lack of freedom
from bias.
The meaning of
the word ‘academic’ is also important in this context. In an earlier
case or hearing involving either Dr Töben or the
Tasmanian Mrs Olga Scully, one of their legal
Opponents
endeavoured to equate ‘academic’ with membership of a university faculty
and/or official status within the university world. The word should,
however, be used in a wide sense such as ‘promoting any of the recognised
fields of higher learning, for example, philosophy, the arts and the
sciences, in a mode of enquiry purposing to seek the truth, such as was the
practice of Plato, founder of the Academy in ancient Athens”. Not to
accept such a wider definition would ignore the fact that many spectacular
intellectual achievements in human history have been achieved by amateurs
and enthusiasts working outside the recognised centers and parameters of
learning of their time.
I am quite
satisfied that, in general, the writings and publishing activities of Dr Töben
and the Adelaide Institute are genuinely academic in that sense. It would be
no rebuttal of such a position to point out that university history
departments around the world do not include Holocaust revisionists on their
staffs. Genuinely innovative theses often have to wait a generation or more
before their truths are accepted into official circles.
On the ABC Radio
National program, The Law Report, on 12 September 2002, hosted by
Damien Carrick and involving Dr Töben together with four eminent
guests none of whom were sympathetic to his ideas, Peter Wertheim, the
lawyer who represented Mr Jones in the case, responded as follows to the
suggestion that Dr Töben has been simply trying to present
evidence and engage in a debate about what history is and what the truth is:
“Well, that was just one of the many rationalizations that Fredrick Töben
tried to put forward in the proceedings, and which was stripped away
brutally in the judgment. The material isn’t just objective, academic
material.”
Wertheim’s
claims are false. As Justice Branson had explained, the relevant defence was
not mounted and so was not adjudicated. Wertheim also said: “It’s not
just put in a dispassionate or academic context; it’s put in a polemical
context.” It is possible for writing to be both academic and
polemical, however.
Wertheim then
asserted: “This is not a genuine, bona fide academic pursuit, a free
enquiry into some matter of genuine historical controversy or curiosity.
This is an attempt to whitewash the crimes against humanity of the Nazis
…” No such finding was made by the court, nor did Wertheim produce a
scintilla of evidence to justify his damaging claim.
In Section 111
Justice Branson expressed approval of a view published by the Canadian Human
Rights Tribunal that “There is also a significant symbolic value in the
public denunciation of the actions that are the subject of this complaint.
Similarly, there is the potential educative … benefit that can be achieved
by open discussion of the principles enunciated in this or any Tribunal
decision.” This value and this benefit are likely to be very different
from what she had in mind, however.
Reverse
vilification
The news of
Justice Branson’s judgment was reported in Melbourne and other national
media in a fairly muted way. “We got the ratbag!” could sum up the
overall presentation. Intellectual support for Dr Töben’s
revisionism was totally, or almost totally excluded. Plenty of vilification
of him was allowed to appear, however – a vilification for which the law,
no doubt, offers him no means of redress.
For example, in
the radio program referred above, Wertheim spoke of the Adelaide Institute
website as one “that just spews out racial hatred” and later referred to
‘ratbag views’, while June Factor, also Jewish, described Dr Töben’s
views (unspecified) as “so far from mine there’s almost hardly to be a
spectrum on which we can both fit’ and ‘nonsensical, ahistorical’, and
Kath Gelber (possibly also Jewish) claimed that Dr Töben
has been dressing a message up “as pseudo science”.
In a letter to The
Sunday Age on 29 September Henry Silver (probably Jewish) referred to
“those mischievous claims of the Holocaust deniers” and to “racist
demagogues … dancing on the graves of Holocaust victims”, specifying Dr
Töben
and David Irving by name. Rex Jory in the Adelaide Advertiser on 20
September wrote: “ I detest the insulting, anti-Semitic views of
… Fredrick Töben”
and later referred to “a ridiculous proposition which was long ago debated
and found baseless” as well as to Dr Töben’s
“historically and racially offensive views”. The Advertiser
itself on 19 September described Dr Töben as “one of
the tiny and deluded band of Holocaust questioners” and then produced a
truly defamatory assertion that material such as Dr Töben’s
“is not only wrong but absurd, distressing and which is synonymous with
the worst – by size and its vile, systematic organization – genocide in
recorded history.”
Jewish
spokeswoman Nina Bassett in The Australian on 20 September stated
that “what Töben
has for many years been putting up on his website is not stupid; it is
demonstrably false and viciously brutal.” And Angela Shanahan four days
later in an opinion article in The Australian referred to “Töben’s
bogus claims”. Whatever their motives, the media in general appear to have
assisted Dr Töben’s opponents in deeply
blackening his name; and one is reminded of John Stuart Mill’s famous
phrase “unmeasured vituperations”. It seems like incongruity, if not
hypocricy, for those decrying vilification in one context to be practicing
it so enthusiastically in another. It is also further evidence of the
nutcracker at work.
Intelligent
response
Ideally, Justice
Branson’s judgment should be appealed all the way to the High Court; but
such may be beyond Dr Töben’s resources, emotional and
financial. If he has capitulated, as his remarks on the ABC Radio National
program suggest, then the struggle for truth and intellectual freedom must
be waged by other patriots. Perhaps every reader of Heritage who
approves of this column could send a copy of it to his or her Parliamentary
representatives, with supporting comments. It would also be good to see the
publication somewhere of expert legal opinion on the Branson Judgment. In my
view, it is clear that the law itself needs to be changed, but that will
not happen overnight.
In the meantime,
this column may be helpful to future defendants of actions such as those
brought against Dr Töben and Mrs Scully. Our opponents
are claiming that the judgment is a useful precedent for their own cause.
However, it seems so full of holes that it may ultimately be usable to our
own advantage.
Fredrick
Töben:
Right of Reply - Adelaide,
2 November 2002
Mr Jackson’s
considerations are, as usual, sensitive and perceptive, but there are just
some matters that need augmenting.
1.
It was Justice Michael Kirby who, during
the 1980s while I was fighting the Victorian Education Department’s absurd
education policies, advised me on a number of legal matters. He spelled out
to me the importance he attached to bureaucracies ‘giving reasons’ for
their decisions made, something in the past senior bureaucrats did not have
to do. Also, he elucidated the mechanism whereby laws developed, i.e. strong
litigants actually contributed to a clarification of problems, legal and
non-legal.
2.
The example is to hand of those who for
the past two decades have maintained that the extent of the ‘Holocaust’
has been exaggerated – plodding along without spreading the message much
beyond the inner circle of friends. My
stance has been a radical one that has now brought upon me the 17 September
Federal Court gag order. Whether this is a matter of “fools rushing
in…” is a matter of preference. For example, some who are faced with
employment termination, take the practical course and transfer out so that
family life remains in-tact. This is the moral problem of sacrificing your
principles for practical effects. Likewise with my German imprisonment.
Why should I have the mistrust and paranoia suffered by the many who
fear life? My conjecture was that having once spoken with a German public
prosecutor, without mishap, then surely why should a second time end in
disaster, as it then did in 1999? Yet, what a learning experience it was!
3.
Justice Branson’s comment that I offered
no defence is wrong. I did write up a defence, even a cross-appeal, but it
was not done properly because I could not get a legal person to help me. She
suggested I read books and use the Court’s library system, i.e. become a
lawyer through the Internet within a few weeks. The pro bono issue
did not even arise. Out of 20+ Australian legal firms, one responded with a
no, and another said they’d like to see $100,000. That was the extent of
my legal help.
4.
Most of the material complained of had
been written by two supporters of Adelaide Institute, both of whom are
Jewish!
5.
The rather blunt expression, “are of
limited intelligence”, is not my phrase and I welcome anyone to lead me to
an article where I use these words. I did, however, state numerously that
many of those who criticise us for what we are doing, are either ignorant of
the facts or are liars. Likewise I said that some appear to be mental
midgets and physical/materialist giants in the way they treat us personally
and our work. Here I would have had Professor Deborah Lipstadt in mind
because in 1994 on her Australian visit she claimed on ABC TV that there is
just no discussion about the Holocaust, something patently untrue. Fondly I
recall how in panic we rang from Australia Ernst Zündel in Toronto after
Lipstadt had made a public statement about the gas insertion holes being
found by Robert Jan van Pelt in the blueprints at the Auschwitz Museum.
6.
And finally, throughout my years of
battling for truth and justice, I have relied on a number of high-profile
Australians (and individuals overseas) who have, from behind the scene and
out of the public spotlight, always counseled me whenever I ran past them
our next proposals, our next projects.
Such a man was Sir Walter Crocker.
Sir
Walter Crocker dies, aged 100
The
Advertiser
Sir
Walter Crocker, a former Lieutenant-Governor of South Australia, has died
aged 100.
The
one-time diplomat and World War II veteran died in the Western Hospital at
Henley Beach.
Sir
Walter was born in Broken Hill and studied at the University of Adelaide,
graduating in 1925. He then studied at Oxford and Stanford University in the
United States.
Sir
Walter gained his early experience during the 1930s in the Nigerian Colonial
Service, going on to work for the League of Nations in the International
Labour Organisation in Geneva, from 1934 to 1940.
In
1946, he was invited to be the first chief of the Africa Section in the UN's
Secretariat in New York, where he served until 1949. That year he became
founding professor at the Australian National University in Canberra.
He
joined the diplomatic service in 1952 and served Australia with distinction
for 18 consecutive years at an ambassadorial level in India, Indonesia,
Canada, Nepal, Belgium, The Netherlands, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Italy.
After
his retirement from the diplomatic service in 1970 Sir Walter returned to
Adelaide, serving on the council of the University of Adelaide from 1971 to
1978, the year he received his knighthood.
He
was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of SA in 1973, serving in the role until
1982.
Foreign
Affairs Minister Alexander Downer said Sir Walter had lived a "long,
rich and varied life characterised by distinguished service in a variety of
fields".
"I was privileged to enjoy a personal friendship
with Sir Walter and I will greatly miss his deep insight, warm charm and
vast knowledge," he said.
Fredrick
Töben comments
I
first met Sir Walter during Adelaide's 1991 War Crimes Trial protest. I had
never protested before in my life, but when I heard that this near
90-year-old would appear with a placard, I decided to become a concerned
citizen and join the protesters.
Sir
Walter's placard read: Vengeance & Hatred Poison Communities As Well As
Persons.
Mine
read: Canadian - British - Australian War Crimes Trials: International ...
'Coincidence'?
On
10 November 1991 Sir Walter said the following:
"As
a fourth generation South Australian, and with a life-long commitment to
Australia's best interest, some of them neither fashionable nor popular, and
with some professional knowledge of the circumstances of the case, I am much
concerned about the way the trial has been brought about. Our Federal
Government, in spite of including a number of men of undoubted integrity and
ability, has agreed to the trial through giving in to the pressures of a
lobby which represents very few Australians, and no Australian interests,
but which is buttressed with great wealth, with exceptional self-centred
persistence, and with ruthless cleverness. A connected lobby has been
operating with similar effects in England, Canada and France. Its
propaganda, accepted by a large segments of the mass media, has confused and
misled Australians, even those normally informed."
After
the protest rocks were thrown through Sir Walter's lounge window!
Since
that time I have had the pleasure of regularly accepting Sir Walter's
invitation to have morning tea at his home. Our conversations ranged far and
wide, and I was encouraged to take notes of matters raised especially
relating to the Middle East and the circumstances surrounding the founding
of the State of Israel.
The
fact that I had also spent time at Minna, Niger State, Nigeria, where Sir
Walter had served, some of these morning tea meetings were for me rather
jovial but always instructive and insightful sessions. That Sir Walter could
at his age still sustain a serious conversation for almost two hours was for
me indicative of a person who had gone through life worrying about our human
condition.
Throughout
my almost decade-long ordeal with the Zionist onslaught on Adelaide
Institute, it was always a delight for me to be given a clear perspective on
matters. Frayed nerves calmed as the wisdom of a century flowed over me. For
that alone, I thank Sir Walter.
His
funeral is on Monday, 18 November, the day on which he asked me to ring him
to arrange our next 'de-briefing session' concerning my up-coming Federal
Court case.
It
was not to be.
Sir
Walter and Fredrick Töben sharing the same
sentiment
Sir
Walter Crocker, et al, opposing the 1991 War Crimes Trial at Adelaide,
Australia
My
last letter from Sir Walter
624
Seaview Road,
GRANGE
S.A. 5022
18th
September, 2002.
Dr. Fredrick
Toben,
The Adelaide
Institute,
P.O. Box 3300,
NORWOOD.
S.A. 5067
Dear Fredrick,
If you had time
I would be interested to have your account of what happened in court
(including the coming appeal case).
Your visit,
therefore, would have to be about a month hence as I am tied up at the
moment with urgent family affairs.
I suggest you
telephone me - or if I am absent, telephone my Secretary, and fix up a time.
Yours
sincerely
Walter
Crocker
During
Adelaide Institute’s 1998 Revisionist Symposium, both Arthur Butz and Jürgen
Graf had a conversation with Sir Walter.
Says Butz: ‘My regrets. I
remember the tea you and I had with him in 1998. He was so British.’
Graf says:
‚Ich erinnere mich sehr gut an den Besuch bei Walter Crocker im August 98.
Möge
ihm die Erde leicht werden - sit ei terra levis!’
Sir Walter was
for the people, but not of the people, and he exemplifies what Revisionists
do so well“ ‚We sich einzetzt, setzt sich aus!’ – loosely
translated: If you commit yourself to a cause, then you should not worry
about personal popularity.
Obituary
Outspoken
statesman a man for all reasons
By
Don Riddell, The Advertiser, 16 November 2002
Sir Walter Russell Crocker
Lieutenant-Governor,
diplomat, academic, author
Born:
March 25, 1902; Broken Hill
Died:
November 14, 2002; Adelaide
Sir
Walter Crocker was a Lieutenant-Governor of South Australia, distinguished
Australian ambassador to many countries and uncompromising critic of his
times.
He
was deeply involved with both the League of Nations and the United Nations,
and felt sharply the cynicism which killed one and diminished the other.
"It
is a measure of the richness and complexity of his character that Sir Walter
Crocker has defied all efforts to stitch neat labels on him,"
journalist Stewart Cockburn wrote when Sir Walter retired as
Lieutenant-Governor in 1982, aged 80.
"For
well over half a century he strode life's stage in so many roles — as a
decorated military officer, scholar, farmer, diplomat, author and confidant
of world figures whose names were household words. He has attracted
innumerable friends and admirers and —through an intrepid independence of
spirit — quite a few critics."
That
independence of spirit was still flowing strongly on the threshhold of his
90th year when he carried a banner outside the Adelaide Magistrates Court
protesting against what he called the "disastrous" decision to
prosecute Ivan Polyukhovich for alleged war crimes.
Sir
Walter took to many causes before they became popular.
As
a diplomat, he enraged convention by saying we should recognise Mao Tse
Tung's China in the early 1960s and opposed what he saw as the giving away
of Australia's foreign policy to the Americans, particularly over the war in
Vietnam. As an environmentalist, he denounced what he saw as the selling of
the "cream" of Australia's mineral wealth to Japan and the US. But
he condemned the emotionalism which could not see the need to cull kangaroos
or insisted only Australian trees should be planted. As an academic, he
fought for the "beauty and elegance" of proper English. "Mere
yabbering" broke down communication. He spurned what he called
"the impudently pretentious trivialities which mark some of the social
sciences".
As
a human being, he loathed pornography. "What a price society has had to
pay," he wrote in one of his books, Australian Ambassador,
"for allowing inventions of such cultural potency as the cinema and
television to fall into the hands of illiterates and bullies,
interested only in money."
Born
of pioneer SA families, Sir Walter was brought up on his father's grazing
property near Terowie. He went on to a brilliant academic career at
the universities of Adelaide, Oxford and Stanford, and was the first
professor of international relations at the Australian National University.
In World War II, he became a lieutenant-colonel in the British Army, winning
the French Croix de Guerre and the Belgian Ordre du Lion. At the end of the
war, he joined the volunteers called for by Lord Casey, then Governor of
Bengal, to carry out relief work in the famine then ravaging the area. In
1946, he was invited to set up and head the Africa section of the new UN
Secretariat in New York. He joined the Department of External Affairs in
1952 as High Commissioner to India.
For
the next 18 years, he was one of Australia's most senior diplomats and acted
as troubleshooter for Lord Casey, then Australia's Minister for External
Affairs. He was ambassador or high commissioner to 10 other countries after
India, including Indonesia, Canada, Italy, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda.
He
did not keep his opinions to himself. The book Australian Ambassador,
published in 1971, had such revealing chapters as 'Three thousand
Cocktail Parties for my Country and Other Aspects of the Diplomat's Life'.
His outspoken attitude almost certainly cost him the job of permanent head
of the department.
He
retired to a property at Tarlee in 1970, but was soon called upon to take on
the role of Lieutenant-Governor and a position on the University of Adelaide
council.
Knighted
in 1978, Sir Walter never revealed his party political feelings and it was a
surprise when he was one of the 12 prominent Australian citizens who
co-wrote the famous 'Kenneth Myer letter' which, in 1972, urged Australians
to vote the Labor Party into office after it had been out of power for 23
years. "The Whitlam Government did not turn out as most of us had
hoped," he said later.
Sir
Walter Crocker, whose marriage was dissolved many years ago, is survived by
two sons, Robert and Christopher, four grandchildren, and nephew John, who
lived with Sir Walter from the age of seven, and his two children.
_______________________
Remember:
The anti-Revisionists use a classic form of persecution. Rather than talk
with Revisionists, they talk about them and vilify them. Pierre Vidal-Naquet
put it clearly in 1992:
I
have thus imposed on myself the following rule: one can and should enter
into a discussion concerning the ‘revisionists’; one can analyze
their texts as one might the anatomy of a lie; one can and should analyze
their specific place in the configuration of ideologies, raise the question
of why and in what manner they surfaced. But one should not enter into
debate with the ‘revisionists’. It is of no concern to me whether
the ‘revisionists’ are neo-Nazi or extreme left wing in their politics;
whether they are characterized psychologically as perfidious, perverse,
paranoid, or quite simply idiotic. I have nothing to reply to them and will
not do so. Such is the price to be paid for intellectual coherence…Will
truth have the last word? How one would like to be sure of it.
Talk is cheap,
and Vidal-Naquet illustrates it so well, but he has forgotten one imperative
that propels Revisionists forward: It is unethical to hold on to any vital
information because ignorance can never be justified. His alleged
intellectual coherence remains self-serving and dialectical. It lacks moral
and intellectual integrity. It does not make contact with the physical
world.
How
would he respond to the following statement?
If
the State of Israel continues to exist, then racism remains a legitimate
form of political activity.
If Israel expels the Palestinians, then this will be
the greatest Holocaust of all times perpetrated by the Jewish people.
Think
on these Things
There
is nothing new in the return of inspectors of so-called weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq
An attempt
to subjugate a defeated state and population 'forever' was made
with the Versailles Treaty in 1920 against Germany and its World War
One allies.
To
enforce the 'de-militarisation' an Inter-Allied Military Control
Commission was formed, which had the power to go anywhere, anytime in Germany
to find concealed and illegal weapons. The Commission, formed out of intentionally
chosen technical experts and German-haters, soon became notorious for its
chicaneries, which extended not unexpectedly into centres of industrial
espionage, economical sabotage, especially in areas where the victors feared German
competition. The German chemical industry was therefore its favorite target.
In
spite of extensive use of bribery and treason in finding forbidden
weapons it was an almost total failure. Yet the commission continued to
hang around Germany until 1927 when it was reluctantly disbanded.
General
von Seekt, chief of the Reichswehr — the German army of that time — had
personally ordered and insisted on adhering to the limitations imposed upon
Germany by the treaty. That patriotic officers of lower rank did not
always comply was a different matter. But in principle this mattered
little, for Germany was effectively disarmed, much weaker than the
smallest of its aggressive neighbours, for example, Czechoslovakia.
Remember, that even that 'shitty little state' of Lithuania was able to
annex part of East Prussia in 1923.
This reminds us
of what is now happening in Iraq.
Suring
the 1920s French politicians unashamedly and without proof pulled the
'secret German armaments and hidden armies' card and, for their own
vindictive ends, made unending demands for 'reparations' with which to
blackmail the feeble Weimar republic.
It
is worth to remember that the previous search for 'weapons of mass
destruction' in Iraq was a failure, and when Iraq kicked out the inspectors,
it was not because of their useless search, but for espionage condoned by
that infamous Australian 'diplomat' Richard Butler.
The de-militarisation Commissions for the other
loser states of World War One were just as ineffective as in Germany.
Austria and Hungary were bankrupt; in Bulgaria the army saw to it
that the investigators were utterly frustrated and thereby accomplishing
nothing, while in Turkey they never managed to start at all because Turkey refused
to ratify the Treaty of Sevres.
The
Töben
Defence Fund
