It is the evening of October 1st 2000 and I have just been watching with some pride and satisfaction the closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games.

The games appear to have been a successful and at times glorious event. Publicity in the media has been enormous which is not surprising for the Olympic Games have become a primary festival of internationalism. While there is much I admire in the achievements of athletes and organisers, it is regrettably true that their contributions may be serving interests that do not have the nobility associated with Olympic idealism - to say nothing of British and Australian honour.

Our Prime Minister John Howard has been highly visible at the Games which prompted Nicholson, a cartoonist in today's national newspaper The Australian to provide a strip series presenting several Howard lookalikes covering the Games highlights for publicity purposes.

Unfortunately the Prime Minister has also been busy facilitating what I believe may turn out to be the most disgraceful action in the short history of our nation. The matter is summed up by the public statement which I issued today (and reproduced elsewhere in this edition of Spearhead), a copy of which has been sent to Mr. Howard. What follows here are some comments I will add to clarify the situation for Spearhead readers.

It was with moral horror that I read a brief report at the bottom of the front page of Australian newspaper in 1986 or thereabouts. In two paragraphs it advised that at American citizen was being deported to Yugoslavia (then a communist country) to face "Nazi war crimes charges." His age was eighty-six.

I could hardly believe that such an act of inhumanity was being perpetrated by an allegedly "Free Nation" with a tradition of British foundation and justice. Then and there I became an opponent of the whole late twentieth century campaign a against "Nazi war criminals" promoted by Jewish lobby groups and enabled by the ignoble acquiescence of non-Jewish politicians and intellectuals.

Soon Australia was treated to a Jewish agitation which led to a government-chartered report by a lawyer, Andrew Menzies, which the best that can be said is that it found what the Government wanted.

There followed a remarkable and vigorous public debate as the Government moved to amend our War Crimes Act so that Australia could hold its own Nazi war crimes trials. The debate was fierce and both sides were well represented in the major newspapers.

I endeavoured to publicise the views of the writer Laurens van de Post (later knighted) and the lawyer F. J. P. Veale, author of Advance to Barbarism, a famous study of the European tradition of chivalry toward defeated foes and its abandonment in the Nuremberg Trials. Van de Post, himself a prisoner of war under the Japanese in the Dutch East Indies, argued in his book Night of the New Moon that war was fundamentally immoral. He had refused to co-operate in any way with the Japanese war crimes trials, whose injustices were well analysed by Veale.

Nobody seemed interested in these theses.

Political power decides

I believe that the national debate was won hands down by these opposed to amending the War Crimes Act. However political strength lay with the other side. The relevant bill was passed in the House of Representatives with bi-partisan support, but, so great was the indignation in conservative Australian circles that the Liberal-National coalition, then in opposition, voted against the proposal in the Senate, when, however, it was too late, since they were in a minority there too.

The Australian public had been assured vociferously by (mainly) Jewish public that there were hordes of Nazi war criminals in Australia just waiting to be exposed. In the event, only a handful of trials were held and no convictions were sustained. This failure appears to have infuriated the Jewish lobby both in Australia and overseas. By contrast, eminent Australian Catholic intellectual Bob Santamaria commented acidly that the leaders of the Jewish agencies "had shot themselves in the foot."

More recently an intense Jewish operation has been implemented to force Australia to extradite men in their late eighties such as Konrads Kalejs (to trial) and Antanas Gudelis (to Lithuania), to face "Nazi war crimes and genocide trials" in those small Baltic nations.

This time there has been almost no public debate in the Australian newspapers. There appears to have been a deliberate effort to black out the case against extradition.

At the same time, the War Crimes Amendment Act was again amended (in December last year) to make the relevant extraditions to the Baltic countries easier! The first the public heard of this move was after it had been accomplished - with bi-partisan support in Parliament!

The purpose

What is the real purpose of this almost diabolical political campaign? I believe, first, that it is intended as punishment and humiliation of Australia. There is annoyance with us over the failed "Republic" referendum, as well as the allied show trials. In the past, victors have humiliated opponents by making them walk under the yoke. Our fate is to be worse - to be implicated, as a people, in sending geriatrics to show trials. A humiliated nation is easier to push into a tyrannous world government.

Secondly, the campaign is just another aspect of a general policy of entrenching Jewish power worldwide. Thirdly, it can serve as a precedent for punishing, sometimes by extradition, Australian citizens in the future who displease the Jewish lobby in other ways, such as, for example, opposing censorship of revisionist historians, or efforts to introduce "race hatred" laws.

The Baltic nations are believed to have been under great pressure, particularly from America and its largely Jewish Office of Special Investigations in the Department of Justice to stage "Nazi war crimes and genocide" show trials as payment for entry into the European Union. This factor has been touched upon by Melbourne journalist John Masanauskas (of Lithuanian origins) in the Herald Sun newspaper and by British Jew David Cesarani in The Sunday Age.

An interesting perspective was placed on this whole issue by the publication of Show Trial (Gollanz, London 1995) by Yoram Sheftel, the Jewish lawyer who successfully defended John Demjanjuk in the late 'eighties and early 'nineties in Israel.

Sheftel's account of the first trial of Demjanjuk contains a scathing indictment of Israel's injustice (with American compliance) in the whole proceedings. Our national newspaper The Australian published a huge account of the trial at the time, in a tone of jubilation; and it seemed that Demjanjuk would be executed. I spent most of the relevant weekend analysing The Australian's coverage, and sent the paper an article for publication exposing the unsatisfactory nature of the whole operation. It was not published! Only grudgingly did the paper publish a shortish letter by me on the matter. There is no excuse for the way in which The Australian misled its readers at the time.

So, behind the glamorous spectacle of the Sydney Olympics it appears that a sordid scenario has been played out in Australia. My regretful conclusion is that Kalejs (and perhaps Gudelis and others) will be extradited to their nations of birth, tried and jailed for life. Will Australians supinely accept such a degradation of their nation, or will this awaken effective resistance? This remains to be seen.

Postcript

Konrads Kalejs was arrested on the 13th December following a Latvian request that he be extradited to stand trial on charges of genocide and war crimes. Needless to say, this event was welcomed by representatives of the Jewish community in Australia, most notably Danny Ben-Moshe, executive director of the B'Nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission and a lecturer in Jewish studies at the University of Melbourne, who commented in an opinion article in the pro-Semitic Melbourne The Age (16th December): "It is imperative that this case is pursued, not only for the justice his alleged victims deserve, but also for the message of justice it will send out to future generations across the globe."

In general, the Melbourne newspapers reported the arrest in deadpan tones as though it were the most normal of activities. A few lines were devoted, here and there to the opinions of Latvian readers, but staunch and long term opponents of the campaign to "get" Kalejs were not invited to comment. On the 25th January Kalejs failed to appear at Melbourne Magistrates Court, his lawyer explaining his absence by his age and poor health. Magistrate Lisa Hannan appeared to show no sympathy for the accused, refusing a requested adjournment and (apparently) reprimanding Kalejs for non-attendance. She claimed that extradition matters should be handled "expeditiously" and set a severe timetable on the defence.

On the 20th February The Age reported that Kalejs lawyers had issued proceedings against the justice Minister (Senator Amanda Vanstone at the time), claiming that she had breached the rules of procedural fairness in issuing a notice under the Extradition Act, failing to give adequate consideration to factors such as Kalej's ill-health and frailty. The matter is listed for directions on the 4th April, two weeks before the hearing into the extradition case will be resumed.

In conclusion, a revealing opinion article in The Australian on the 9th October last year ("idiot MP's could save Kalejs", by Glenn Milne) deserves mention. Milne reported that senator Vanstone had warned her fellow MP's "that if they fail to allow Kalejs to be extradited they will face an electoral backlash from Australia's powerful Jewish lobby." Milne added; "Vanstone is not worried about civil liberties niceties. She simply wants Kalejs extradited for political reasons."