Police State Blues

This man let the cat out of the bag... Good on him. The cat has turned out to be a man-eating tiger, so to speak.

Meanwhile In Our Own Little Dystopia...
ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope went and blew the lid on the Howard Government's controversial Anti-Terror laws.

The Government has been playing cat and mouse over its anti-terror legislation but now the community can finally have a say, Michelle Grattan writes.

IT WAS an exquisite prick of the hubris balloon. Less than 24 hours after the Howard Government insisted a Senate inquiry into its sweeping anti-terrorism legislation would be confined to a week - less in real parliamentary time - it was infuriated by the pre-emptive release of the draft bill.

ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope's website posting of the legislation on Friday won't affect the Senate inquiry's length, but it does mean the debate about the bill's nitty gritty gets under way much earlier than the Government had planned. It had intended to unveil it in the week starting October 31.

A hallmark of the fourth-term Howard Government is control. Yet regular breakdowns of that control have been a characteristic of the months since the election. Last week was classic.

Not only did Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce cross the floor over competition legislation, but the tactics employed by him, Labor and the minor parties to enable the amendment that he supported to be carried also left a surprised Government flat-footed.

Then the Opposition embarrassingly revealed that the Government had ordered a rewrite of its industrial relations advertising brochure, leading to tens of thousands of booklets being pulped at considerable cost.

Stanhope's defiant action prompted the Government (through calls from bureaucrats, including the head of the Prime Minister's Department, Peter Shergold) to try unsuccessfully to get the draft bill taken down.

Of course Stanhope refused. Besides, as soon as it was posted interested parties started downloading. There was no chance of getting the smothering cloak of secrecy back.

Anyway, what legitimate grounds does the Government have for its demand?

Absolutely none. The bill's a "work in progress", the Government says. Well, some exposure will give a wider range of interested parties the chance to contribute to the progress of a work that appalls many civil libertarians.

It is outrageous that the Government was giving so little time between the planned date of release and the passage of the legislation, which it intends to get through Parliament before Christmas. That it has such scant regard to the processes of democratic discussion on a piece of legislation which tramples comprehensively on people's rights makes you worry about how it would use the law itself.

The breadth of what can be done under the proposals is extraordinary. And so is the potential for innocents to be caught up in the net. People over whom police obtain a control order - terror suspects or those who have trained with a terrorist organisation - can be detained for up to a year, effectively under house arrest.

That they can be forced to wear a tracking device is almost the least of it. They can be stopped from making phone calls, prevented from working and told where to be and when. Remember these people have not been charged with an offence.

John North, president of the Australian Law Council, raises the risk that a government could use the provision for preventive detention of people without charge (two days under federal law, two weeks under complementary state law) as a device to sweep up people and minimise security dangers when, for example, there is a major conference attended by foreign leaders.

Other parts of the bill also raise concerns. Take the section "financing a terrorist". A person commits an offence by intentionally giving funds to someone (directly or indirectly) and being "reckless as to whether the other person will use the funds to facilitate or engage in a terrorist act". The penalty for this? Life imprisonment.

Then there is the wide definition of what it means for an organisation to "advocate" the committing of a terrorist act. This includes where "the organisation directly praises the doing of a terrorist act".

The offence outlawing the giving of assistance "by any means whatever" to an organisation or country that the Australian Defence Force is fighting (penalty - seven years in prison) has a "good faith" let-out designed to cover political debate (as well as for humanitarian assistance). But there's a lot of subjectivity involved.

It's easy for critics to argue that opponents of the anti-terrorism laws are exaggerating their misuse. This overlooks history and human nature. This Government's treatment of asylum seekers, and its patent disregard for the rights of David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib do not encourage giving it the benefit of the doubt.

The imperative is to get the balances right when the legislation is passed. With the Government able to get its way in the Senate it has the absolute whip hand. But at least, thanks to Stanhope, the cautionary voices now have a little better chance to be heard and more weight will be put on small-l liberals in the Coalition to act as watchdogs.

Feel the fury yet?
There's a government in Canberra that was about to shove through pretty nasty laws that could lock people up for 'sedition', without charge. apparently, the language in it could make protest rallies illegal and punishable.

I was at the airport a few days ago, and saw the recent spate of notices that specifically said, one was not allowed to make jokes about the terror threat and that if one did, it would be a punishable crime. That's just at the airport. Well, I recently told you about my little encounter with customs officials "just doing their jobs"; let me tell you, the first thing that goes through your mind is "how do I belittle this fucking prick?" - and that's now *illegal*. There's something really wrong going on in our society, and there's nary a stink about it. Why the hell did Australia vote these turkeys back into government? Could Mark Latham have been this bad?

The fact of the matter is, the anti-terror laws couldn't prevent the London tube bombings. It hasn't even stopped them from trying subsequent attacks. Why would these laws stop our own brand of misfit terrorist wannabes? The most famous person the anti-terror law in England was visited upon, was an octagenerian heckler Walter Wolfgang in a Labour Party meeting.

WHEN exactly did we kiss goodbye to the idea of free speech?

Before we bungle off to war again fighting for other people’s freedom, perhaps we should take stock about what’s happening to our own.

The sight of 82-year-old Walter Wolfgang being thrown out of a hall during an Iraq debate at the Labour Party conference was chilling.

As a child, Mr Wolfgang escaped Nazi Germany; a country where the slightest dissent was met with a jackboot or a concentration camp.

No doubt, Walter’s experience of a fascist state formed his political opinions. A lifelong member of the Labour Party, he probably believed that this country was safe from thought police. Heckling politicians used to be a respected national pastime.

But those days are gone Walter. Well, unless you are a Muslim cleric inciting death to the infidels. Then you get police outriders and politicians falling over themselves to defend your rights.

But for Walter, a diabetic pensioner, it was a culpable offence to shout he word “Nonsense’’ while listening to Mr Straw’s justifications for the Iraq war.

Dissent, conscientious objections and mild rebellion among party members are no longer tolerated in the British politburo. Walter was just lucky not to be sent off to a correction camp.

As it was, he found himself threatened by our state police who later detained him under anti-terror laws when he attempted to re-enter the conference centre.

Anti-terror laws? What in God’s name is all that about? Defending the realm now means rough-handling old men who dare to question a cabinet minister.

Party discipline is one thing; a fascist or neo-socialist desire to eliminate all opposition is quite another.

I suppose our current politicians are unskilled in how to handle heckling. Giants of the past knew how to give waspish retorts to comments from the floor. Nowadays, they have to stick to the approved pre-written texts.

No time to phone HQ to get a rubber-stamped riposte when they are on the floor. No wonder few of them bother to turn up for debates in parliament.

Walter now says that his beloved party shuts people up rather than engaging in debate. Anti-terror laws and national ID cards? Perhaps we should all be debating those ideas – while we still have the chance.

The man was wrestled to the ground and taken into custody without charge under those very laws. And even though a few days later the Blair Government issued a profuse apology, the point was easily seen how the law can easily be used by the state to lock up anybody without charge.
It could happen to you or me for simply making a wisecrack about, say, John Howard's height. Or even yelling "nonsense" when he next delivers a crappy little speech in your neighbourhood.
So it's a legitimate question to ask, "do we even need such laws?"

Yet, the wave of public outrage is largely dormant. It's actually downright pathetic that citizens accept these things just because somebody who hates us might explode a bomb sometime in the unforeseeable future. It's the sort of risk we've always had to live with. All I can see is that we live in a gormless, gutless society. It's downright disgusting. To rub salt into the injury here's the editorial from the Australian:

IF hysteria were covered by Canberra's proposed anti-terror laws, the courts would soon be full of opinionated journalists and ostensible advocates of civil liberties with cases to answer. At the weekend, ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope gave the usual Howard-hating suspects ammunition for their argument that the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, are intent on suppressing civil liberties. Mr Stanhope used his website to publish a draft of the anti-terror legislation, adopted in principle by state, territory and national leaders last month. Including him. This stunt is too cute by half. Certainly, the more, and sooner, we know about the Government's plans, the better. But we cannot afford the terror law debate to be packaged as a civil liberties issue. Mr Stanhope demonstrated why on Sunday, when he proudly announced the ACT would play an important role in a national security exercise. "It is important that we test our responsiveness to a potential terrorism incident," he said. Fair enough, but it is equally important to have laws in place that may reduce the risk of an attack happening in the first place.

Certainly, the proposed anti-terror laws erode civil liberties. But only for people suspected of being terrorists on active service, or their confederates. Is there a chance that innocent Australians could be caught in the net and be detained for 14 days? Yes. Is it possible that others who have done, nor planned, no wrong could be forced to wear a tracking device for a year, or be banned from specified areas or occupations? Perhaps. Could a suspect attempting to escape be shot dead? Regrettably, so it seems. Perhaps one day a police officer will have to shoot somebody with a bomb in their backpack. This is tough stuff, but so are the times. With an estimated 800 people ASIO believes merit watching, Australians face an unprecedented risk of political violence. The question opponents of the new laws have to answer is: what price should Australians be forced to pay to leave alone people who are avowed enemies of us all? The answer was obvious to all the premiers at the heads of government meeting last month. Despite debate over the detail, the nation's most senior politicians have accepted the general principle of the legislation. And understandably so. Laws intended to reduce the risk of a bomb exploding on a bus or in a shopping mall make obvious sense to any politician who has to answer for the public safety. As does the weekend announcement of a doubling in ASIO's numbers, intended to make it easier to catch aspiring terrorists and place them before the courts before they have a chance to act. This is not a hypothetical debate. Perhaps the risk we face is lower than London's, or that endured by ordinary people in Jakarta, Madrid, New York, and all sorts of other cities around the world. But perhaps it is not. We know men with murder on their mind have lived among us. And there is no reason to assume we are now free of people who believe mass murder is legitimate politics.

Because the threat is real and the laws necessary, it is important that the case for why we must surrender some civil liberties be made. These are laws that will be most effective when they are understood and supported throughout the community. Yesterday The Australian reported that the Government's backbench security committee was concerned with freedom of speech aspects of the legislation and had secured some changes.

Good for them. But not good enough. We need to know the detail of this legislation well before it is enacted, if only to ensure that the Howard haters have no credibility for any claim that it is an attack on our rights, rather than a defence against a specific, and very real, threat. No open society ever loses anything from a debate.

Ugh. What an asshole.
It's not hysteria. Our rights come down to us through a very lengthy historic process; of civil wars and wars fought; people tried and executed for crimes they didn't commit. It's a long, long process that got us here with what few rights we do have. As inhabitants of a technological post-modern society we'd be insane to be giving up any of those hard won rights that have been wrested from Emperors, Kings, Barons, the rich, the elite who would see us all die miserably without a fight and say "let them eat cake". Well, screw you Mr. Chris Mitchell, and screw you thrice with a cricket bat for you may have the liberty to argue your stupid views so loudly in such a mighty forum as a major broadsheet newspaper of this nation, but history will prove us 'hysterics' right. And I'm going to get my hacks in now before some armed goons come storming into where I live to stop me writing this stuff.

Yes, the threat of terrorism is real in as much as rocket launches in China are real. They're media pseudo-events. There is no *ought* that comes out of media posturing that necessitates any erosion of our frail civil liberties. Anybody who believes that has thrusted custard for brains.

Far out. They should hunt these fascists out of town and unto extinction. Which brings me to this hunt for a fascist asshole supreme:

Dr. Death, Known Fuckwit, Spotted

As the hunt for the old Nazis contiue 60yearss on, they are now saying they've located Aribert Heim a.k.a. Dr. Death in Spain. The Israelis hope they might even manage to bring the bastard in for execution, but the Spaniards are playing coy. After all, there was that whole Spanish Civil War thing going on in the 1930 that casts a shadow on all these things (not to mention the Spanish Inquisition - "nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition", but in this case, it's historically true).

"We haven't detained anyone with that name," said Joan Lopez, a police spokesman in Girona. "All we know is that he may have been in the area of Palafrugell recently."

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz said Heim, 91, will soon be arrested by Spanish police. Heim had been at large since he was charged by German authorities in 1962 with killing hundreds of concentration camp inmates in Germany and Austria with lethal injections.

A spokesman with the Nazi watchdog Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Stephen Clem, told Haaretz the centre has evidence that Heim is still alive. Heim has since the end of the war evaded capture in Germany, Argentina, Denmark, Brazil and Spain.

Heim has amassed a fortune of more than $US2 million ($A2.63 million) in a Berlin bank, Clem told Haaretz.

A call to the centre's Israeli branch requesting comment was not immediately returned today.

During the war, Heim earned his nickname of Dr Death for performing especially sadistic experiments on inmates at the Buchenwald and Mauthausen camps.

The research included surgery without anesthesia and injecting prisoners with petrol, poison and lethal drugs to see how much their bodies could take before dying, Haaretz said.

Spanish investigators believe a relative of Heim has transferred about $US363,000 ($A480,000) to an acquaintance in Spain over the past five years and are looking into the possibility that at least some of it may have been used to support Heim, Der Spiegel reported.

The magazine said as early as the mid-1980s, Spain was suspected as his possible hiding place, and there have been increasing indications over recent weeks he may have until recently lived somewhere near Denia on the Mediterranean coast.

After the war, Heim worked as a doctor in southern Germany until he was indicted. German authorities have offered a $US159,000 ($A210,000) reward for his arrest, and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre $US12,200 ($A16,000).

The centre earlier this year asked Austria to find a way to strip Heim of his academic title of doctor that he received in 1940 from the University of Vienna. Heim was never allowed to practice medicine in Austria because he did not finish his medical training in the country.

I like the irony that the guy doing all these horrific 'medical' experiments never finished his degree. It's in resonance with Hitler putting together an exhibition of 'The Academy of Degenerate Art' once he was in power, just to get back at the people who wouldn't let him into art school.