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March - April 2006
America's Blinders by Howard Zinn
Published on Tuesday, March 21, 2006 by the Progressive
Now that most Americans no longer believe in the war, now that they no longer
trust Bush and his Administration, now that the evidence of deception has become
overwhelming (so overwhelming that even the major media, always late, have begun
to register indignation), we might ask: How come so many people were so easily
fooled? The question is important because it might help us understand why
Americans-members of the media as well as the ordinary citizen-rushed to declare
their support as the President was sending troops halfway around the world to
Iraq.
A small example of the innocence (or obsequiousness, to be more exact) of the
press is the way it reacted to Colin Powell's presentation in February 2003 to
the Security Council, a month before the invasion, a speech which may have set a
record for the number of falsehoods told in one talk. In it, Powell confidently
rattled off his "evidence": satellite photographs, audio records,
reports from informants, with precise statistics on how many gallons of this and
that existed for chemical warfare. The New York Times was breathless with
admiration. The Washington Post editorial was titled "Irrefutable" and
declared that after Powell's talk "it is hard to imagine how anyone could
doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction."
It seems to me there are two reasons, which go deep into our national culture,
and which help explain the vulnerability of the press and of the citizenry to
outrageous lies whose consequences bring death to tens of thousands of people.
If we can understand those reasons, we can guard ourselves better against being
deceived.
One is in the dimension of time, that is, an absence of historical perspective.
The other is in the dimension of space, that is, an inability to think outside
the boundaries of nationalism. We are penned in by the arrogant idea that this
country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable,
superior.
If we don't know history, then we are ready meat for carnivorous politicians and
the intellectuals and journalists who supply the carving knives. I am not
speaking of the history we learned in school, a history subservient to our
political leaders, from the much-admired Founding Fathers to the Presidents of
recent years. I mean a history which is honest about the past. If we don't know
that history, then any President can stand up to the battery of microphones,
declare that we must go to war, and we will have no basis for challenging him.
He will say that the nation is in danger, that democracy and liberty are at
stake, and that we must therefore send ships and planes to destroy our new
enemy, and we will have no reason to disbelieve him.
But if we know some history, if we know how many times Presidents have made
similar declarations to the country, and how they turned out to be lies, we will
not be fooled. Although some of us may pride ourselves that we were never
fooled, we still might accept as our civic duty the responsibility to buttress
our fellow citizens against the mendacity of our high officials.
We would remind whoever we can that President Polk lied to the nation about
the reason for going to war with Mexico in 1846. It wasn't that Mexico
"shed American blood upon the American soil," but that Polk, and the
slave-owning aristocracy, coveted half of Mexico.
We would point out that President McKinley lied in 1898 about the reason for
invading Cuba, saying we wanted to liberate the Cubans from Spanish control, but
the truth is that we really wanted Spain out of Cuba so that the island could be
open to United Fruit and other American corporations. He also lied about the
reasons for our war in the Philippines, claiming we only wanted to
"civilize" the Filipinos, while the real reason was to own a valuable
piece of real estate in the far Pacific, even if we had to kill hundreds of
thousands of Filipinos to accomplish that.
President Woodrow Wilson-so often characterized in our history books as an
"idealist"-lied about the reasons for entering the First World War,
saying it was a war to "make the world safe for democracy," when it
was really a war to make the world safe for the Western imperial powers.
Harry Truman lied when he said the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima because
it was "a military target."
Everyone lied about Vietnam-Kennedy about the extent of our involvement, Johnson
about the Gulf of Tonkin, Nixon about the secret bombing of Cambodia, all of
them claiming it was to keep South Vietnam free of communism, but really wanting
to keep South Vietnam as an American outpost at the edge of the Asian continent.
Reagan lied about the invasion of Grenada, claiming falsely that it was a threat
to the United States.
The elder Bush lied about the invasion of Panama, leading to the death of
thousands of ordinary citizens in that country. And he lied again about the
reason for attacking Iraq in 1991-hardly to defend the integrity of Kuwait (can
one imagine Bush heartstricken over Iraq's taking of Kuwait?), rather to assert
U.S. power in the oil-rich Middle East.
Given the overwhelming record of lies told to justify wars, how could anyone
listening to the younger Bush believe him as he laid out the reasons for
invading Iraq? Would we not instinctively rebel against the sacrifice of lives
for oil?
A careful reading of history might give us another safeguard against being
deceived. It would make clear that there has always been, and is today, a
profound conflict of interest between the government and the people of the
United States. This thought startles most people, because it goes against
everything we have been taught.
We have been led to believe that, from the beginning, as our Founding Fathers
put it in the Preamble to the Constitution, it was "we the people" who
established the new government after the Revolution. When the eminent historian
Charles Beard suggested, a hundred years ago, that the Constitution represented
not the working people, not the slaves, but the slaveholders, the merchants, the
bondholders, he became the object of an indignant editorial in The New York
Times.
Our culture demands, in its very language, that we accept a commonality of
interest binding all of us to one another.
We mustn't talk about classes. Only Marxists do that, although James Madison,
"Father of the Constitution," said, thirty years before Marx was born
that there was an inevitable conflict in society between those who had property
and those who did not.
Our present leaders are not so candid. They bombard us with phrases like
"national interest," "national security," and "national
defense" as if all of these concepts applied equally to all of us, colored
or white, rich or poor, as if General Motors and Halliburton have the same
interests as the rest of us, as if George Bush has the same interest as the
young man or woman he sends to war.
Surely, in the history of lies told to the population, this is the biggest lie.
In the history of secrets, withheld from the American people, this is the
biggest secret: that there are classes with different interests in this country.
To ignore that-not to know that the history of our country is a history of
slaveowner against slave, landlord against tenant, corporation against worker,
rich against poor-is to render us helpless before all the lesser lies told to us
by people in power.
If we as citizens start out with an understanding that these people up there-the
President, the Congress, the Supreme Court, all those institutions pretending to
be "checks and balances"-do not have our interests at heart, we are on
a course towards the truth. Not to know that is to make us helpless before
determined liars.
The deeply ingrained belief-no, not from birth but from the educational system
and from our culture in general-that the United States is an especially virtuous
nation makes us especially vulnerable to government deception. It starts early,
in the first grade, when we are compelled to "pledge allegiance"
(before we even know what that means), forced to proclaim that we are a nation
with "liberty and justice for all." And then come the countless
ceremonies, whether at the ballpark or elsewhere, where we are expected to stand
and bow our heads during the singing of the "Star-Spangled Banner,"
announcing that we are "the land of the free and the home of the
brave." There is also the unofficial national anthem "God Bless
America," and you are looked on with suspicion if you ask why we would
expect God to single out this one nation-just 5 percent of the world's
population-for his or her blessing.
If your starting point for evaluating the world around you is the firm belief
that this nation is somehow endowed by Providence with unique qualities that
make it morally superior to every other nation on Earth, then you are not likely
to question the President when he says we are sending our troops here or there,
or bombing this or that, in order to spread our values-democracy, liberty, and
let's not forget free enterprise-to some God-forsaken (literally) place in the
world.
It becomes necessary then, if we are going to protect ourselves and our fellow
citizens against policies that will be disastrous not only for other people but
for Americans too, that we face some facts that disturb the idea of a uniquely
virtuous nation.
These facts are embarrassing, but must be faced if we are to be honest. We must
face our long history of ethnic cleansing, in which millions of Indians were
driven off their land by means of massacres and forced evacuations. And our long
history, still not behind us, of slavery, segregation, and racism. We must face
our record of imperial conquest, in the Caribbean and in the Pacific, our
shameful wars against small countries a tenth our size: Vietnam, Grenada,
Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq. And the lingering memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It is not a history of which we can be proud.
Our leaders have taken it for granted, and planted that belief in the minds of
many people, that we are entitled, because of our moral superiority, to dominate
the world. At the end of World War II, Henry Luce, with an arrogance appropriate
to the owner of Time, Life, and Fortune, pronounced this "the American
century," saying that victory in the war gave the United States the right
"to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such
purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit."
Both the Republican and Democratic parties have embraced this notion. George
Bush, in his Inaugural Address on January 20, 2005, said that spreading liberty
around the world was "the calling of our time." Years before that, in
1993, President Bill Clinton, speaking at a West Point commencement, declared:
"The values you learned here . . . will be able to spread throughout this
country and throughout the world and give other people the opportunity to live
as you have lived, to fulfill your God-given capacities."
What is the idea of our moral superiority based on? Surely not on our behavior
toward people in other parts of the world. Is it based on how well people in the
United States live? The World Health Organization in 2000 ranked countries in
terms of overall health performance, and the United States was thirty-seventh on
the list, though it spends more per capita for health care than any other
nation. One of five children in this, the richest country in the world, is born
in poverty. There are more than forty countries that have better records on
infant mortality. Cuba does better. And there is a sure sign of sickness in
society when we lead the world in the number of people in prison-more than two
million.
A more honest estimate of ourselves as a nation would prepare us all for the
next barrage of lies that will accompany the next proposal to inflict our power
on some other part of the world. It might also inspire us to create a different
history for ourselves, by taking our country away from the liars and killers who
govern it, and by rejecting nationalist arrogance, so that we can join the rest
of the human race in the common cause of peace and justice.
Howard Zinn is the co-author, with Anthony Arnove, of "Voices of a People's
History of the United States." -- © 2006 the Progressive 
Charges against Hicks a “distraction”says
U.S. lawyer -- brief report of Adelaide forum.
The British government lost its recent appeal against David Hicks British
citizenship on the basis that a court could not rely on pre-citizenship
behaviour to revoke Hicks citizenship. This was the statement made by the former
President of the United States Criminal Lawyers Association, and David Hicks
civilian lawyer, Mr Joshua Dratel, at a recent Adelaide forum.
Speaking on Wednesday 12 April, Mr Dratel said Hicks should be given the
benefits that the other nine British subjects were given. The other nine were
allowed to leave Guantanamo Bay prison (in Cuba) and return to Britain after a
British court found that Guantanamo Bay was not operated in accordance with
international law.
Despite having received British citizenship, David Hicks still had not
received any of the benefits of being a British citizen. Mr Dratel said the
reason for that was that the American government and those at Guantanamo Bay
would not allow British consular officials into the prison to swear Hicks in as
a British citizen, despite trying “several times a day” on some occasions.
An alternative which is being explored is to make David Hicks a British citizen
without administering an oath.
Mr Dratel added that the fact that Hicks had been charged while the other
nine British citizens had not been was nothing more than a mere “distraction”
for the public and that he would look into the aspects of the charges further.
He questioned whether the American Congress had delegated authority to President
George W. Bush, to allow him to form military commissions." The commission
process is unfair,” Mr Dratel said.
David Hicks U.S. military lawyer, Major Michael Mori, agreed that Hicks would
not receive a fair trial “based on rules and procedures in court marshals or
in criminal or civil trials.” He said the reason why his client would not
receive a fair trial was that “those who had created the system had a vested
interest in it.” He cited the Secretary of the Department of Defense as an
example, illustrating that he was involved in the war in Afghanistan and also
was responsible for “creating Guantanamo Bay”.
Major Mori said the prevailing attitude by 2002 was that anyone in Guantanamo
Bay prison was “condemned as being a killer”. Detainees could not go home
now, he said, because the American Defense Department was faced with a conflict
of interest. “Officials don’t say that David had killed anyone, or shot
anyone. If there had been any evidence of that, it would have been up in big,
bold letters,” Major Mori said.
David Hicks Adelaide lawyer, Mr David McLeod, said he had “opened up a
dialogue” with the Australian Foreign Affairs Minister, Mr Alexander Downer,
and that the Australian government could now see that the process involving
David Hicks had been slow.
The forum, which attracted a full hall of people, was held as David Hicks
remained in solitary confinement, where he has been for three weeks. Last time
he was in solitary confine-confinement he was there for eighteen months. It is
understood that while in solitary confinement, David Hicks is in a small room,
he does not have access to sunlight, or adequate exercise, and he cannot talk to
anyone if prison guards are instructed not to talk to him. Major Mori said that
one of the reasons people are placed in solitary confinement is to “break”
them.
State waxes, rights wane
State waxes, rights wane By Adam Bandt
April 4, 2006 The Age It is undisputed that terrorism laws have undermined basic
legal rights that have existed for centuries. The prohibition on detention
without charge, the right to silence and the principle of due process have all,
to varying degrees, been weakened or removed. Many people hope this is a
temporary aberration, a stopgap act by the Government until the war on terror is
over, at which time the rule of law will be returned. But what if something
deeper is going on? What if the way we think about law and rights is being
transformed? A look at the parallels between the new industrial laws and the
terrorism laws reveals some disturbing trends.
With WorkChoices, the Government has restumped the industrial relations house.
For the first time since Federation, the legislative underpinning is no longer
that part of the constitution that gives Parliament the power to prevent and
settle industrial disputes by way of conciliation and arbitration. Instead,
almost the whole of the new laws are based on the power to make laws on the
activities of corporations. This is not simply a technical legal point. It
represents a fundamental tenet of the new form of government: the conflicting
expectations and interests of employers and workers are no longer broader social
questions but narrow questions of economic management.
For example, minimum wages used to be set by an adversarial hearing before the
Australian Industrial Relations Commission, where unions, employers and
governments would present their positions, and the AIRC would determine a point
of compromise.
Now, however, this job has been given to the new Fair Pay Commission.
Significantly, there will be no formal hearings before this new body. No right
to present evidence or challenge arguments. Similarly, the AIRC will no longer
have any power to make new awards, and all existing awards will be abolished
over about two years. When it comes to certified agreements, it is no longer
permissible to give the commission the power to resolve in a binding way
disputes over wages, conditions and entitlements.
This idea of a "'small state" receding from conflict is certainly part
and parcel of the globalisation myth of non-intervention and economic
rationalism (also called "neo-liberalism"). But there never has been a
small state of neo-liberalism, and conflict cannot be simply wished away.
Instead, the laws relating to industrial action have been massively
strengthened.
The industrial relations commission has traditionally been a place for giving
employers cheap and quick options for stopping industrial action, but the AIRC's
brief has by and large been to try to resolve the underlying dispute before
proceeding to exercise coercive powers. And it was always left with residual
discretion on whether to make orders. Now, however, the laws require the AIRC to
order that industrial action cease. The discretion has been removed:
"may" has been replaced with a "must".
The role of the workplace relations minister is also notable. In certain areas,
the minister is able to declare that any industrial action is unlawful, and to
issue directions about how parties will behave. If the minister is satisfied,
for example, that it is probable that some industrial action may occur that
might affect public safety, then he can simply declare the industrial action
unlawful without a hearing.
Unlike the present situation, unions and employees would not even have a chance
to defend their actions: a worker would first find out about it when an officer
of the government serves them with an order demanding that industrial action
cease under pain of a penalty.
There has also been increased spending on policing functions. In the building
industry, inspectors are regularly writing to workers and demanding they attend
for interviews. At these interviews, inspectors ask them about union meetings,
about who suggested industrial action take place and about whether they
participated in these meetings. The law has removed the right to silence for
these people being questioned by an inspector: the law requires you to answer
and name names.
And the commission has recently started denying workers the ability to be
represented by lawyers of their choice in these interrogations, claiming that
union lawyers can't represent more than one worker because a
"conspiracy" has been alleged. And I am aware of workers in other
industries being written to by the Government and told they will face fines or
possible imprisonment for alleged participation in unlawful activities.
Another significant element of the WorkChoices model is to allow people to do
the same work - even for the same employer in the same place - but to be paid
differently. A worker's relationship to the law is thus no longer one of a
presumption of equal treatment and entitlement; instead, everything is radically
contingent on the employer. Add to this the abolition of any protection against
unfair dismissal. In many respects, there will now be no equal rights before
labour law, and certainly no fundamental rights. This dovetails with the
operation of the terrorism laws, where the ability of the individual to assert
rights against the law is now also increasingly reduced to a question not of
right but of fact.
So, the state is not withering away. Instead, these laws help create what has
been called "the strong state of neo-liberalism". As with terrorism
laws, industrial conflict is not to be resolved by such a government, just
prohibited. And unlike previous eras, the government does not seek its
legitimacy in its ability to harness industrial conflict and direct it towards
national ends, but merely in its power to police it.
Adam Bandt is a Melbourne industrial lawyer. This is an edited text of a speech
given at the University of Melbourne's "Terror Seminar" series.
What price security?
Saturday, March 25, 2006 The Age
The Saturday Essay : WHAT PRICE SECURITY?
Striving for the illusory goal of full protection from terrorism creates the
risk of bad laws that do even greater damage, insists George Williams.
This year marks the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attack and the
beginning of the "war on terror". It is time to take a step back to
assess the successes and failures of the new laws we have enacted in response.
Until September 11, Australia had no national laws dealing with terrorism. It
and other forms of political violence were dealt with by the ordinary criminal
law. Since the attacks, we have passed a litany of new laws. Since March 2002,
when the first bills were introduced into Federal Parliament, we have enacted 29
new terrorism laws, or a new law about every seven weeks. This does not include
the additional laws passed by the states and territories. The pace of change has
not slowed this year, with legislation already in the Federal Parliament dealing
with matters such as the interception of emails.
New laws were needed to deal with terrorism. A legal response was required to
signal that, as a society, we reject such violence and to ensure that our police
and other agencies have the powers they need to protect the community. Laws were
also needed to fulfil our international obligations as a member of the United
Nations. Governments across Australia deserve credit for recognising this. In
hindsight, our legal system before September 11 reflected complacency about the
potential for political violence in Australia and the region. By contrast New
Zealand has had terrorism laws in place since 1987.
While we need anti-terror laws, they must be the right ones. Unfortunately, our
new legislation suffers from serious problems. This is not surprising, given
that it runs to hundreds of pages and the speed with which it has often been
enacted. To go from no federal law to a comprehensive and complex regime in a
few years was always going to be difficult.
Our new laws have realigned our legal system through the extensive powers they
grant to government and their impact upon our liberties. The scope of the shift
is unprecedented in Australian history. The new laws define terrorism, itself a
problematic task, and establish an array of new criminal offences with severe
penalties. These include offences for planning or carrying out a terrorist
attack or even for possessing a "thing" connected with such an attack.
We also have laws for detention and house arrest of Australians without charge,
and for the banning of organisations and the jailing of their members and
supporters. Legislation even restricts what can be said in open court as part of
a person's defence and, through new sedition laws, what can be said in public.
ASIO also has important new powers, such as the ability to have non-suspects
detained for up to seven days to force them to reveal anything they know about
terrorism. There is no right to silence, and failure to answer ASIO's questions
is punishable by up to five years in prison. It is a crime, for two years after
someone has been held, to disclose "operational information" about the
detention. The penalty for doing so is imprisonment for up to five years, even
if the information is provided as part of a media report exposing problems with
the regime.
No other nation has such a law. Even in the aftermath of the attacks in New
York, Madrid and London, it has not been propos-ed in the US, Spain or Britain
that an intelligence organisation be able to have citizens not suspected of any
crime detained in secret for questioning and jailed if they fail to cooperate.
The problem with our terrorism laws lies not only in their scope and operation,
but also in how they have been made and debated. These systemic issues must be
addressed if we are to avoid repeating the errors of the four and a half years.
Laws have been made without sufficient justification that the change is needed.
New anti-terror laws should be passed only when the argument for them has been
powerfully made so as to justify them as a means of dealing with a specific
identified problem. It is not surprising that our political leaders, as
lawmakers, have turned to new laws as a frontline response to terrorism. New
legislation is at least within their control and is a symbolic and potentially
practical response. But while political leaders may want to be seen to be acting
in response to the attacks, we need to be realistic about what new laws can
achieve. They cannot provide long-term solutions.
Legislation is unlikely to tackle the causes of terrorism, nor to deter a
terrorist from a premeditated course of action. Further, law-making may direct
attention away from the debate about other, more effective, responses. As
drivers of change after a terrorist attack, grief, fear and political
opportunity are some of the worst possible motivations. Our response to
September 11 has been essentially reactive. Each new attack and set of
disturbing images has meant a new law, or often several new laws. However, by
itself, an attack does not mean that the Government needs new powers. This can
only be determined after careful scrutiny of existing laws in light of what can
be learnt from the attack. Unfortunately, new laws have been made with such
haste that a careful assessment of where we already stand has been impossible.
The laws passed after the London bombings were enacted so quickly that they have
come into force before two continuing enquiries into the effectiveness of our
existing laws can report. Before the 2005 attack, neither the Government or its
key agencies were putting the case for change to the law or an expansion of
their powers, yet after the bombings the pressure for this proved irresistible.
The cycle of an attack followed by a new law is dangerous. Driven by fear and
the need to act, we run the risk of a series of over-reactions. This is the
dynamic that terrorists rely upon. By our own actions we may isolate and
ostracise members of our community, who instead of helping
intelligence-gathering may be susceptible targets for terrorist-recruitment.
Through our over-reactions and short-term thinking, we may actually make
ourselves more vulnerable to terrorist attack. As well, the process of making
the new laws since the London bombings has been deficient. The laws in 2002 and
2003 were debated in the media and Parliament over several months and, in some
cases, were analysed by more than one parliamentary committee. This led to more
important changes that had bipartisan support. It gave us strong laws more
likely to survive a High Court challenge. Indeed, on the first anniversary of
September 11, Prime Minister John Howard said that "through the great
parliamentary processes that this country has, I believe that we have got the
balance right".
By contrast, with control of the Senate secured from July 1 last year, the Prime
Minister sought to rush through new laws after the London bombings. He wanted to
have the laws in place by Christmas at the expense of a proper inquiry and
public debate. The release on the internet of the draft legislation by ACT Chief
Minister Jon Stanhope provided greater than expected opportunities for debate
and more time was also given as a result of the laws being constitutionally
suspect. But the process was still severely truncated.
The laws were passed by Christmas - in lightning fashion for legislation of such
importance dealing with subjects as diverse as sedition and the preventive
detention without charge of Australian citizens. Remarkably, the compromise on
sedition laws involved as immediate inquiry after their enactment into whether
they need to be fixed and also whether new sedition laws are required in the
first place. Holding such an inquiry after the laws have been put on the statute
book is one of the more bizarre and unfortunate aspects of how our terror laws
have been made.
We have lost sight of the need for balance between our national security and
fundamental freedoms. The object of the laws cannot be national security at all
costs. The goal should be to protect the community form terrorism while ensuring
that we retain the freedoms that make Australia the country it is. This involves
some give and take. Some basic rights, such as privacy, should be limited in
appropriate circumstances to ensure that our police and intelligence services
can deal with a threat. On the other hand, other changes cannot be justified,
because they disproportionately undermine democratic principles. The new
sedition laws are an example. They imprison people for what they say rather than
for what they do, arguably for little gain in preventing a terrorist attack. We
should not damage our democracy and liberties in this way in the name of
defending them against terrorism.
Australia is especially vulnerable to this. As the only democratic nation
without a national bill of rights, we must rely upon the parliamentary process
(a frail shield at present) or the good sense of our political leaders. These
are ineffective checks at a time of community fear and, in any event, are not
safeguards that are now regarded as sufficient in any like nation. While it is
encouraging that the ACT now has a Human Rights Act and Victoria has announced
that it will enact a Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities, protection
for our speech and other rights is also needed at the federal level. Public
debate on our laws is often not based on a realistic assessment of the risk and
an understanding of the limits of the law. There has always been, and will
always be, a risk of a terrorist attack. If the goal is to eliminate that risk,
we will fail. The law, no matter how stringent, cannot guarantee our security.
Moreover, as history shows, the more repressive or draconian the law, the more
that some people will be likely to take extreme action. The law can thus also
become part of the problem that we are seeking to mitigate. It is natural that
our fears will lead us to do all that we can to protect ourselves and our
families, especially in response to a faceless and unknown threat such as
terrorism. With a recent poll finding that more than two-thirds of Australians
believe that terrorists will strike "before too long" and that a
terrorist attack in this country is inevitable, it is not surprising that there
is great pressure to enact new laws at any cost.
What we need is leaders who, rather than playing to our fears, help us to
understand that we must accept a level of risk of terrorist attack. There is no
other option. If we strive for the illusory goal of full protection from
terrorism, we risk doing even greater damage to our society and its freedoms and
values. This will also warp political debate, policy choices and resource
allocation in ways that cannot be justified.
We risk repeating these same mistakes if we do not change course. Unfortunately,
there is no current sign that this will occur. New attacks will lead to new laws
that will further erode our fundamental freedoms, increase fear and anger in
parts of the community and make the problems more intractable. It seems likely
that in the past four and a half years we have seen only the beginning of the
"war on terror". The laws we have today were unthinkable before
September 11. It is equally hard to imagine the laws that we will end up with in
the event of future attacks.
Tapping into SMS and email
Monday, April 3, 2006 The Age.
George Williams
A nod from the minister is all that's needed to tap into email and SMS.
Last week, Federal Parliament passed a new law that allows the Government to
read our private emails, text messages and other stored communications without
our knowledge.
The power extends to innocent people, called B-parties, if they have been
unlucky enough to communicate with someone suspected of a crime or of being a
threat to national security.
The Government should sometimes be able to monitor the communications of
innocent people. This may be necessary to protect the wider community in [a]
case in which a suspect can only be tracked through another person. However, the
law goes far beyond what can be justified and undermines our privacy more than
is needed.
Under the Telecommunications (Interception) Amendment Act, the Government
will be able to access communications not only between the B-party and the
suspect, but also between the B-party and anyone else. If you have unwittingly
communicated with a suspect (and thereby become a B-party) the Government may be
able to monitor all of your conversations with family members, friends, work
colleagues, your lawyer and your doctor. Your most private and intimate
communications may be pored over, without your knowledge, by people you never
met.
The Government may be able to use the information it collects even though the
information is not related to the original suspect. It also does not have to
tell you that it has been listening in. This is the case even if telling you
would not prejudice the investigation. While you have some remedies if you have
been illegally monitored, these are pointless if you do not know you have come
under surveillance.
This is of even greater concern given how easy it is for ASIO to gain a
warrant. The gatekeeper is not an independent person such as a judge, but a
politician, the federal attorney-general. As long as ASIO has tried other means
of tracking a suspect, to gain a warrant it need only show the attorney-general
that intercepting the B-party's communications is likely to assist in obtaining
intelligence related to security. The use of terms as vague as "likely to
assist" and "relating to security" provides scope for the misuse
of power.
A further issue is how the law distinguishes between stored and real-time
communications (such as telephone conversations). It is much easier to monitor
stored communications, apparently because they are seen as less private than
telephone conversations. However, now that telephone conversations often occur
in public on mobile phones, many people, particularly young people, reserve
their most personal interactions for email and text messages. It is nonsensical
that our personal affairs are made less private because they are in an email
rather than said over the phone.
These problems have been compounded because the Government rushed the law
through Parliament without taking account of advice from its own ranks. The
Senate committee examining the bill unanimously found last Monday that the
powers were too extensive. It recommended a major strengthening of the
protections against misuse. The Government's own report into the area also
suggested stronger protections. Despite these warning, the law does not
incorporate the recommended safeguards. Amendments to the law over the past week
widened the reach of the law.
The Government says that there is an urgent need for this law and that it
could not wait to give further consideration to the Senate committee's
recommendations. This approach is wrong-headed. Like the sedition laws of late
last year, a law of this importance should not be enacted in haste in the face
of obvious problems. This is especially true when the law provides for covert
surveillance.
Protecting our national security and investigating serious crime are
important goals. But we must be careful that in developing a legal response, we
do not lose sight of the freedoms we are trying to protect. We should ensure
that if the Government gains intrusive new powers over our privacy that they are
balanced and go no further than is required.
This law goes too far. It contains more power to access our emails and text
messages than is needed and contains too few safeguards. The Government should
have come up with a law that better protects the private communications of
innocent people.
Professor George Williams is director of the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public
Law, University of NSW. He was assisted in this article by intern David Hume.
Holding Yawulya: white culture and black women's law
(Book review)
I love this book. It shamed, embarrassed, entertained and enlightened me, all
at the same time. It is an important historical journal of Indigenous girls and
women that has archival context as well as promoting an understanding of what
women's business really is. I don't think there could be a woman alive who could
not identify with the inherent genetically coded 'xx'; the womanliness of the
Elders as described by Ishtar.
Finally someone has been able to put into words some of the cringe factors
that I have never been able to articulate without feeling that I was
transgressing some unwritten rule. I would like to highlight some passages in
the hope that they will encourage you to read the book and maybe even stimulate
questions and discussion.
On page 194 there is a definition that I think is important:
"Living Culture is the amorphous, unassailable cultural force which is
created when people - bound together by kinship, community and homelands -
experience the fullest expression of their connectedness with the cosmology of
their ancestors"
I believe that for white Australia, this is the missing element as we do not
connect well, we rarely feel kinship and we are only ever bound together in
times of dire straits, football matches or rock concerts, (hardly homeland
stuff).
Throughout this book there is an aura of respectful permission. You get the
feeling that everything that has any potential to be sensitive has been well
discussed and an unanimous position adopted by these indigenous women.
Early in the book is a fascinating discussion on LAW versus LORE, law being
moral authority, legitimising actions and lore meaning knowledge, wisdom,
learning, and science. "All life forms have their own Law, their own codes,
which are reflected in their language, their ceremonies and the ethics of their
cohabitation, their purpose and their rules" (Rose 1958; 257)
Another interesting comment is in relation to change and who has control over
change: "There is a marked difference between cultural change which occurs
when Indigenous people have control over its evolution and change which is
enforced by a dominating society. The latter contradicts the gradual, self
directed change which arises through the passing generations." My private
reflection is how true and applicable to society today, both on a macro and
micro level.
Zohl was given puya (skin) name (kinship) but when it came to learning, she
realized that unlike white society where you learn by asking questions, her
learning had to happen by osmosis, indeed it was expected to happen that way, ie
through the skin.
The Socratic question/answer system of learning not only doesn't work in
Aboriginal contexts, it can be offensive. Aboriginal communication and language
is oral and it is also absorbed through living touching and connectivity.
Dirt is a marker of racial difference. To be happy White people require clean
spaces devoid of rubbish. In fact huge empty spaces are significant, clean,
stark, white, empty lines of space where dirt is the enemy. Exactly the opposite
applies for Aboriginal people who live not ON the earth but IN it!
A large part of the book goes into the White story from an annihilation
attitude to a missionary zeal for assimilation and accommodation. Just look at
the one-eyed way they went about, declaring Aboriginal beliefs as primitive and
superstitious fairy tales while going on to teach about virgin births etc.
Zohl also discusses the severe treatment of girls in missions. Their
pre-determined life of domestic slavery meant that they were kept busy cleaning,
etc while boys could still go out and hunt and socialize. Women's role in
general was downplayed with the belief that they were largely irrelevant. My
personal observation is that this view has persisted. I remember the disbelief
that was broadly held over the secret women's business in the Hindmarsh Island
Bridge affair in South Australia.
If you are as moved as I was with this book, you can contact me and we could
set up a working group to follow through with Zohl and the Kapululangu Elders.
My email contact is gilbeysue@hotmail.com.
Upcoming events
Women in Afghanistan today: hopes, achievements and challenges
Speaker: Mariam Rawi , member of the Revolutionary Association of the Women
of Afghanistan (RAWA). Marian Rawi has addressed audiences in Italy, Japan,
Brazil and Korea and in 2004 participated in the conference "Community
Development, Human Rights and the Grassroots" at Curtin University of
Technology, Melbourne. Coming directly from the refugee camps in Pakistan,
Mariam can speak with authenticity and from personal insight. Thursday 27th
April - 6.15pm for 6.30pm at UniSA City East Campus, H2-02 Mutual Community
Lecture Theatre - Basil Hetzel Building (off Frome Street).
Values for Living in the 21st Century
A SYMPOSIUM - Featuring: Hugh Mackay, renowned Social Trends Researcher - in
dialogue with local Adelaide Panellists Session 3: 26th April 2006 , 7.30 -
9.00pm At the Pilgrim Uniting Church, 12 Flinders Street, Adelaide
National Values - how flexible? With : Penny Wong and Lee Levett-Olson
Coffee, food and conversation with speakers to follow. $5 at the door.
This Symposium launches a discourse on the values which undergird personal life,
families and being Australian and global citizens. The Symposium is intended to
provoke our thinking about those values which either enhance or harm life. Hugh
Mackay will chart community trends and with our panellists will discuss ways
ahead for us as individuals, families, our nation and as citizens of the globe.
No particular religious perspective will be promoted, but panellists may share
how their own faith experience shapes their views. A Program of Pilgrim Uniting
Church
Ph: 8212 3295 www.pilgrim.org.au
Enquiries: Rev Jonathan Barker 0438 012 227
East Timor Friendship Association -- Annual General Meeting
Sun, 30 April, 2:00pm at FILEF Meeting Room, rear 15 Lowe Street, Adelaide.
Followed by Public Meeting at 3:00pm
ISABEL MILLER, will speak about her visit to East Timor as a World Vision Youth
Ambassador.
Annual Independence Dinner - Sat, 20 May, 6:30pm for 7:00pm start at Folk
Federation Centre, cnr George St & South Rd, Thebarton. A fundraising event
and celebration of East Timor's Independence. Donations for Raffle and Silent
Auction required. Please contact Miriam (8295 6481) or Don (8371 0528) if you
are able to offer items for these fundraisers.
BOOKINGS ESSENTIAL: Tickets $30 or $25 concession 8295 6481 / 8371 0528
UniSA United Nations Society launch
Supported by The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre
Wednesday 3rd May 5.30pm for 6.00pm start Venue: UniSA City East Campus (H2-02)
Kuju Arts and Crafts Centre
The Kuju Arts and Crafts centre dedicated to Aboriginal art already is
proving a hit in Port Lincoln. The centre has only been open for three weeks but
is a popular tourist stopover. The centre is hoped to encourage other Aboriginal
people to showcase their artistic talents.
The ADC Gandel Oration Atrocity Crimes: Overcoming Global
Indifference : Gareth Evans, President of the International Crisis Group.
Presented by The Anti-defamation Commission of the B'nai B'rith organisation and
supported by The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre, UniSATuesday 2nd May 7.45pm
for 8.00pm start UniSA City East Campus (H2-02) Cost: $5 entry
Mixing Law, Religion and Politics Progressive Christianity Network SA
invites you to hear Father Frank Brennan SJ AO, Professor of Law, Institute of
Legal Studies, Australian Catholic University, reflecting on the relevance of
religious beliefs in law, politics and public life.
· How far should religious authorities go in participating in the development
of law and policy?
· Should public life be left only to atheists?
· How does the mix of law, religion and politics in America compare with
Australia?
· What place is there in democracy for conscience?
Friday 5 May 2006, 7.30 pm at the Effective Living Centre, 26 King William Rd,
WayvilleCost: $12, $10 concession To book: Ph 8271 0329 Fax 8357 9818
email: pcnet@effectiveliving.org
Web: www.effectiveliving.org
Fairtrade Fortnight 2006 with Oxfam Australia and Oxfam Shop.
Do you want to fondue? Are you a coffee drinker? During
Fairtrade Fortnight Oxfam Australia is hosting two tasting sessions in the Oxfam
shop at Charles Street for people to try fairtrade products. There will be
coffee, fondue, chocolate and spice tastings, as well as other fair-trade
delicacies. Fairtrade is about giving poor farmers and communities a fair go by:
· paying farmers and workers a fair price for their work, creating reliable
markets and ensuring better labour conditions;
· providing a certification and labelling system to guarantee Fairtrade
standards are met and the benefits of Fairtrade get back to the farmer who grew
the product.
At Oxfam shop 24 John Martins Plaza, Charles St.
Saturday 29 April 12.30-3.30 Friday 12 May 4-7pm
Nukunu History
The Melrose Courthouse Heritage Centre will open a new exhibition opening on
May 20. The exhibition is the culmination of a three year long collaborative
project between the museum and the Nukunu People's Council. The exhibition will
explore relationships between local indigenous people and Europeans since white
settlement began.
Andrew Hewett, Executive Director of Oxfam Australia
Andrew Hewett is coming to Adelaide to give a talk about the
three big challenges facing Oxfam Australia:
· the increasing number of complex humanitarian emergencies
· the need for the Australian govt to commit to global justice
· and the changing development scene
Thurs 27 April 5.30pm for a 6pm start - 7pm finish
or Fri 28 April 10.30am for a 11am start - 12 noon finish
RSVP 26 April contact Judee Adams on 8236 2160 or email judeea@oxfam.org.au
Andrew is also the Vice-President of the Australian Council for International
Development (ACFID), the peak council of non-government overseas development
agencies. He has represented Australian and International NGOs at meetings with
the World Trade Organisation, World Bank, IMF and Asian Development Bank. In
1999 Andrew coordinated the Oxfam humanitarian response to the crisis in East
Timor. He is actively involved in Oxfam International and has been a principal
member of Oxfam International's delegation at both the 2003 WTO Ministerial
meeting in Cancun, Mexico and recently at the 2005 WTO Ministerial in Hong Kong.
Reconciliation Week 2006 - Combined Churches Service
A combined churches service will be held in Reconciliation Week
on Wednesday, 31 May, at 7.30pm in St Francis Xavier Cathedral. Aboriginal
people from the Anglican, Catholic, Lutheran and Uniting Churches have expressed
interest in participating. Aboriginal people from other Churches are invited to
lodge their expression of interest in being involved by emailing to acm@acc.asn.au
. The service will include traditional dance and singing as well as prayer and
scripture readings.
Call for Entries : Women's peace photography exhibition Women's Eye on Peace
II Photography Exhibition: Call for Entries. The International Women's
Development Agency's (IWDA) inaugural Women's Eye on Peace photography
exhibition attracted over 400 images from 16 countries. All funds raised from
the exhibition funded a peace-building forum for Afghan refugees in Pakistan in
2004. IWDA, in association with Marie Claire and AusAid, are currently planning
Women's Eye on Peace II, a photography exhibition that calls for submissions
from both amateur and professional female photographers from all corners of the
globe. The photographs must respond to the question: How do you see peace? The
exhibition opening will be held in Melbourne on the 31st of October to coincide
with the anniversary of the passing of the United Nations Security Council
Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. Closing date for entries is 31st
July.
For information /entry forms visit www.iwda.org.au
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A Peace of the Action
Radio program A Peace of the Action
is dedicated to commentary on peace and social justice issues.
Radio Adelaide 101.5FM every Sunday at 12.30.
Ron Gray
Human Rights Foundation
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for more information about the RGHRF
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