John Howard

John Howard   (politician)
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
Member of	Australian Club (Sydney), International Republican Institute/Board and Staff, JP Morgan Chase/International Council, Mont Pelerin Society
Party	Liberal Party of Australia
Prime Minister of Australia In office 11 March 1996 - 3 December 2007 Preceded by Paul Keating Succeeded by Kevin Rudd  Treasurer of Australia In office 19 November 1977 - 11 March 1983 Succeeded by Paul Keating  Australia/Leader of the Opposition  In office 30 January 1995 - 11 March 1996  Australia/Leader of the Opposition  In office 5 September 1985 - 9 May 1989  Chairperson-in-office of the Commonwealth of Nations In office 2 March 2002 - 5 December 2003 Preceded by Thabo Mbeki  Manager of Opposition Business in the House In office 7 April 1993 - 31 January 1995  Australia/Minister for Special Trade Negotiations In office 17 July 1977 - 20 December 1977  Australia/Minister for Business and Consumer Affairs In office 22 December 1975 - 17 July 1977  Member of the Australian Parliament for Bennelong In office 18 May 1974 - 24 November 2007 Succeeded by Richard Marles

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 about "Iraq's WMDs", John Howard, as Australian PM and third partner in the war coalition, escaped this public opprobrium.

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."

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

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". 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."

 

A Quote by John Howard

Page	Quote
Port Arthur Massacre	“We need to achieve a total prohibition on the ownership, possession, sale and importation of all automatic and semi-automatic weapons. That will be the essence of the proposal that will be put by the Commonwealth government at the meeting on Friday...”

 

Appointments by John Howard

Appointee	Job	Appointed	End
Julie Bishop	Australia/Minister/Ageing	7 October 2003	27 January 2006
Julie Bishop	Australia/Minister/Women	27 January 2006	3 December 2007
Julie Bishop	Australia/Minister/Education and Science	27 January 2006	3 December 2007
Peter Dutton	Australia/Minister/Workforce Participation	26 October 2004	27 January 2006
Peter Dutton	Assistant Treasurer of Australia	27 January 2006	3 December 2007
Andrew Shearer	National security adviser

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References

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