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WSWS : News & Analysis : Australia & South Pacific

James Cogan on YouTube

Rudd and Howard prepare to back US attack on Iran

12 November 2007

Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author

The World Socialist Web Site is today publishing a YouTube video address by James Cogan, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) candidate for Chifley in the November 24 Australian federal election. Cogan, a full-time journalist with the WSWS, is one of 13 SEP candidates advancing a socialist and internationalist alternative to war and militarism, social inequality and the escalating attack on democratic rights.

Cogan’s five-minute presentation is delivered outside a train station in Blacktown, one of the working class suburbs in western Sydney that make up the Chifley electorate. He explains that the most serious issue facing ordinary working people—war and militarism—is not being discussed in the official election campaign. The neo-colonial wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been driven, he makes clear, not by terrorism but by Washington’s drive to control the region’s energy supplies.

Cogan describes the Bush administration’s advanced preparations for a military attack on Iran and points out that Australian military and intelligence resources—including a warship currently stationed in the Persian Gulf, the Pine Gap facility, and special military personnel—are already involved.

“Howard and Rudd will not speak about the plans for war in Iran or the obvious Australian involvement in them,” Cogan points out. “Instead, they repeat the Bush administration’s lies about the Iranian government, just as they repeated the lies about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction. The silence of Howard and Rudd means only one thing. It means that they have both given assurances to Washington that any government they head will support a US war against Iran.”

Cogan concludes by explaining that the Socialist Equality Party opposes any aggression against Iran and demands the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan and Iraq. The architects of these illegal wars of aggression, including Prime Minister Howard and his colleagues, should be prosecuted for war crimes.

The YouTube addresses by Cogan and other SEP candidates can be viewed on the SEP’s election website (www.sep.org.au) and our YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/SEPElectionSite07.

Authorised by N. Beams, 100B Sydenham Rd, Marrickville, NSW