anti-terrorism laws

A Patriot's Act is a legal novel by lawyer Kenneth Eades, exploring the impact of Bush's terror laws, based on case histories. In a legal investigation and then a trial, we see how US administrations redefined torture in the light of 'terrorism' and we learn what that could mean to an individual. This clear but sophisticated story dramatises what has been sacrificed for 'safety' and how much less safe it really makes us. This article by the author of the book, gives a history of how we got from there to here. Although the author writes about the United States, Australia has aped that country with its own terror laws.

After the release of the CIA Torture Report, we are reminded once again of the abuses that our own government committed in the so-called “War on Terror.”

Amnesty international has called the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp the “gulag of our time.” Since President Obama’s order to close the camp within one year on January 23, 2009, it has remained open because the president decided to amass political capital to use for his domestic agenda, which included “Obamacare.” On January 7, 2011, Obama signed the 2011 Defense Authorization Bill, which placed restrictions on transferring prisoners to the United States. As of May 2014, there were 149 detainees being held, at a cost to the government of roughly $1.9 million per detainee. Some of them have been held, without trial and without charge, since 2003. 46 of them have been declared by the government to be too dangerous to release, but they cannot be tried for any crime because there is insufficient evidence to try them. Approximately half of the detainees held today have been cleared for release, but may never regain their freedom. Many of their native countries have refused to repatriate them, and, because of the new legislation, they cannot be transferred to prisons in the United States.

Courts have upheld detentions at Guantanamo under the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress three days after the September 11th attacks. The reasoning behind this is to keep prisoners from returning to the battlefield until the conflict is over. But the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan show no sign of being over, especially with the rise in power of ISIS, which is a direct result of U.S. intervention and destruction of infrastructure.

When the United States military arrested the detainees and threw them into Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp indefinitely, they denied them the right to counsel guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. They also denied them the right to a speedy trial, to confront the witnesses against them, to a trial by jury, and the right to be informed of what they were was charged with. They denied them the his right to trial by jury, guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment, his right to due process of the law by holding them indefinitely with no charge, and his coerced confession violated his privilege against self-incrimination.

Finally, and most importantly, by beating them, torturing them and treating them as less than human, depriving them of sensory input, overloading their senses, force feeding and torturing them, the Government denied them the Eighth Amendment guarantee to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. Not only were detainees denied the constitutionally guaranteed rights that any person imprisoned in the United States would be entitled to, no matter the heinous crime they may be accused of, they were also denied the rights that any enemy soldier captured fighting against the United States would get pursuant to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions prohibits detention practices that are “cruel, degrading, or humiliating.”

The Government’s position that the Constitution had no effect at Guantanamo Bay has caused enormous separation-of-powers concerns in that the president was not allowed to simply “turn the Constitution off” simply because Guantanamo, which had been under U.S. possession and control for over 100 years, was located in a foreign country.
After September 11, 2001, torture was official U.S. policy under George Bush – authorized at the highest levels of government. Evidence of its continued and systematic practice continues to surface to this day.

On September 17, 2001, George Bush signed a secret finding empowering the CIA to capture, kill, or interrogate al-Qaeda Leaders.” It also authorized establishing a secret global network of facilities to detain and interrogate them without guidelines on proper treatment. Around the same time, Bush approved a secret “high-value target list” of about two dozen names. He also gave CIA free reign to capture, kill and interrogate terrorists not on the list.

On November 13, 2001, the White House issued a Military Order regarding the “Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War on Terror.” It determined that “an extraordinary emergency exists for national defense purposes that this emergency constitutes an urgent and compelling government interest and that issuance of this order is necessary to meet the emergency.” It defined targeted individuals as al Qaeda and others for aiding or abetting acts of international terrorism or harboring them. These individuals were to be denied access to U.S. or other courts and instead tried by military commission with the power to convict by the concurrence of two-thirds of its members.

On December 28, 2001, Deputy Assistant Attorney Generals Patrick Philbin and John Yoo, sent a Memorandum to General Counsel, Department of Defense, and William Haynes II entitled: “Possible Habeas Jurisdiction over Aliens Held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.” It said that federal courts have no jurisdiction over and cannot review Guantanamo detainee mistreatment or mistaken arrest cases. It further stated that international laws don’t apply in the “War on Terror.” This laid the groundwork for abuses in all U.S. military prisons.

On January 18, 2002, Bush issued a “finding” stating that prisoners suspected of being al Qaeda or Taliban members are “enemy combatants” and unprotected by the Third Geneva Convention. They were to be denied all rights and treated “to the extent….consistent with military necessity.” Torture was thus authorized. The 2006 Military Commissions Act (also known as the “torture authorization act”) later created the Geneva-superseded category of “unlawful enemy combatant” to deny them any chance for judicial fairness.

On January 19, 2002 Donald Rumsfeld sent a memo to the Joint Chiefs of Staff entitled: “Status of Taliban and al Qaeda.” It stated that these detainees “are not entitled to prisoner of war status for purposes of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.” It gave commanders enormous latitude to treat prisoners “to the extent appropriate with military necessity” as they saw fit.

On January 25, 2002, Alberto Gonzales issued a memo to George Bush, which called the Geneva Conventions “quaint” and “obsolete” and said the administration could ignore them in interrogating prisoners. He also outlined plans to try prisoners in military commissions and to deny them all protections under international law, including due process, habeas corpus rights, and the right to appeal. In December 2002, Donald Rumsfeld concurred by approving a menu of interrogation practices allowing anything short of what would cause organ failure.

On February 7, 2002, the White House issued an Order “outlining treatment of al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees.” It stated that “none of the provisions of the Geneva Conventions apply to our conflict with al-Qaida or the Taliban in Afghanistan “or elsewhere throughout the world.”

A plethora of similar memos followed covering much the same ground, allowing all measures that had been banned under international and U.S. law, including the 1994 Torture Statute and the Torture Act of 2000, and the 1996 War Crimes Act, which imposes a penalty of up to life in prison or death for persons convicted of committing war crimes within or outside the US. Torture is a high war crime, the highest after genocide.

Two other memos were written by John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, Jay Bybee (now a federal court of appeals justice in the Ninth Circuit) and David Addington, Dick Cheney’s former legal counsel. One was for the CIA on August 2, 2002. It argued that interrogators should be free to use harsh measures amounting to torture. It said federal laws prohibiting these practices don’t apply when dealing with al-Qaeda because of the presidential authorization to use force during wartime. It also denied that U.S. or international law applies in overseas interrogations. It essentially “legalized” anything in the “War on Terror” and authorized lawlessness and supreme presidential power.

On March 14, 2003, the group issued another memo entitled, “Military Interrogation of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside the United States.” This became known as “the Torture Memo” because it swept away all legal restraints and authorized military interrogators to use extreme measures amounting to torture. It also gave the President as Commander-in-Chief “the fullest range of power….to protect the nation.” It stated he “enjoys complete discretion in the exercise of his authority in conducting operations against hostile forces.” In 2004, the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith, rescinded the Memorandum, saying it showed an “unusual lack of care and sobriety in legal analysis and seemed more an exercise of sheer power than reasoned analysis.”

Nevertheless, other administration documents authorized continued use of practices generally reflecting Yoo’s and Bybee’s views. They authorized the infliction of “intense pain or suffering” short of what would cause “serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure, (loss of significant body functions), or permanent damage” may result. The President’s July 20, 2006 Executive Order was one such document, entitled “Interpretation of the Geneva Conventions Common Article 3 as Applied to a Program of Detention and Interrogation Operated by the Central Intelligence Agency.” It pertained to “a member or part of or supporting al Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated organizations who may have information that could assist in detecting, mitigating, or preventing terrorist attacks….within the United States or against its Armed Forces or other personnel, citizens, or facilities, or against allies or other countries cooperating in the war on terror….”

It authorized the Director of CIA to determine appropriate interrogation practices. Based on what is now known, they included sleep deprivation, waterboarding or simulated drowning, stress positions (including painfully extreme ones), prolonged isolation, sensory deprivation and/or overload, beatings, electric shocks, induced hypothermia, and other measures that can cause irreversible physical and psychological harm, including psychoses.

In a secret 2007 report, the International Committee of the Red Cross concluded that CIA interrogators had tortured high-level al Qaeda prisoners. Abu Zubaydah was one, a reputed close associate of Osama bin Laden and a Guantanamo detainee. He was confined in a box “so small he had to double up his limbs in the fetal position” and stay that way. He and others were also “slammed against the walls,” waterboarded to simulate drowning, and given other harsh and abusive treatment.
The report also said Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged chief 9/11 planner, was kept naked for over a month – “alternately in suffocating heat and in a painfully cold room.” Most excruciating was a practice of shackling prisoners to the ceiling and forcing them to stand for as long as eight hours. Other techniques included prolonged sleep deprivation, “bright lights and eardrum-shattering sounds 24 hours a day.”

ICRC’s Bernard Barrett declined to comment but confirmed that Red Cross personnel regularly visit Guantanamo detainees, including high-level ones. They also “have an ongoing confidential dialogue with members of the US intelligence community, and we would share any observations or recommendations with them.”
The executive continued to deny all basic rights to detainees, including the constitutional guarantee of habeas corpus, and the Congress went along with it, in passing a series of Acts of Congress attempting to limit this constitutional guarantee. However, in 2004, the United States Supreme Court held, in Rasul v. Bush, that the habeas corpus jurisdiction of United States federal courts extended to Guantanamo Bay. In 2004, the Court also held, in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, that due process mandated that an alleged enemy combatant held on U.S. soil be entitled to a due process challenge of his enemy combatant status.

In June 2006 the Supreme Court, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld threw out section 1005a of the Detainee Treatment Act denying the right of an alien detainee to habeas corpus, and ruled that the structure and procedures of the military commissions established to try detainees violated both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions had been violated. Congress passed and Bush signed into law the Military Commissions Act in October 2006, overriding the Supreme Court’s decision.

In 2008, the Supreme Court threw out the Act’s prohibition of the federal courts’ jurisdiction to hear detainees’ habeas corpus petitions as an unconstitutional suspension of habeas corpus in Boumedine v. Bush.

District Court Judge Aiken threw out two sections of the Patriot Act that modified the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in Mayfield v. United States, but her decision was rendered moot on appeal when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal decided that Mayfield could not pursue his declaratory relief claim after he had settled with the government.

The “War on Terror” is still on, and is still being used as an excuse to broaden or extend the broad brush of governmental power. The USA Patriot Act was designed to be temporary, but has been reauthorized in 2005 and 2006. On February 27, 2010, President Obama signed into law legislation reauthorizing three controversial sections of the Act relating to roving wiretaps, lone wolf surveillance and seizure of property and records. On May 26, 2011, he signed into law the Patriot Sunsets Extension Act to extend key provisions of the Act. On June 1, 2015, the Patriot Act expired, but the next day, Obama signed into law the USA Freedom Act, which restored, in modified form, the most controversial provisions of The Patriot Act.

James Madison said, “The means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.”
When he said this, he knew that he and Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and all the other statesmen who formed this country made the government to answer to the people, not the other way around. When they set up three branches of government with checks and balances, they did this so that no one branch would get any more powerful than the other. What we are seeing now is an abuse of power by an over-zealous president, and that abuse of power must be stopped. It is making the United States of America, once a beacon for liberty and freedom, and an example for every other democracy to follow, into an aggressive country that does not respect its own laws and does not play by its own principles. This is unacceptable, and we, as citizens of this country, need to send a clear message to your government with this verdict that the United States is a good and humane nation, who does not torture prisoners of war. We are a nation of laws, a nation who respects our fellow humans and the rights of our own citizens, as well as the rights of citizens of other countries.

Kenneth Eade is an attorney and the best-selling author of A Patriot’s Act, the fictional story of a naturalized U.S. citizen, captured in Iraq and held indefinitely at Guantanamo.

Kenneth Eade is a legal thriller writer who chooses difficult and original subjects, of the kind that preoccupy candobetter.net readers and authors. This article foreruns the imminent publication of The Spy Files and is based on Kenneth's research for that novel. See also "Book Review: Kenneth Eade's Thriller faction series highlights GMO industrial politics in US and Ukraine conflict". Candobetter.net Editor.

Privacy today faces threats from an ever-growing surveillance apparatus that is justified in the name of national security or the war on terror. Agencies of the federal government, such as the FBI and the NSA intrude on the communications and activities of private citizens on a regular basis, using data they mine from our private resources to establish watch lists, based on what they perceive to be “suspicious behavior.”

These watch lists have, among other things, prevented people from entering the country, prevented them from flying on airplanes, barred them from certain jobs, and shut them out of financial accounts.

The founders of our [United States] government designed it to be transparent, so that the governing people could know what the governors were doing. One of the most important methods of making the government transparent, in their minds, was a free press.

The Freedom of Information Act, which was signed into law on July 4, 1966, is a tool which is available to anyone, but it is frequently used by reporters in order to obtain information from the government.

In 2012, Reporter Jason Leopold was working on a story about Hesham Abu Zubaidah, the brother of Guantanamo detainee and accused terrorist, Abu Zubaidah. Hesham signed a consent to allow Leopold to request documents on him under the Freedom of Information Act and was visited by an FBI agent. (Truthout.org article May 29, 2012 by Jason Leopold, “So Then the FBI Sent Out an Agent to Check Up on My FOIA Request”).

In 2006, the FBI claimed that it had inadvertently sent classified and privileged documents to the Washington Post, and requested the Post to return them. It claimed that any further “review, disclosure, retention, and/or dissemination of the classified document or the classified information contained in the classified document may be a federal crime.” The Post agreed to and did return the document, but only because it did not directly relate to the story it was working on (Editor & Publisher, March 3, 2006, “Post Did Not Feel it Had to Return Classified Document.”)

While there is currently no precedent of such a successful prosecution, The government has also been known to reclassify documents that it previously produced. This retroactive classification prevents public discourse of the information contained in the documents, even by congressional subcommittees and even when Congress is actually investigating alleged abuses by the FBI (Abel, “Do You Have to Keep the Government’s Secrets?” University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 163, 1038.)

This article reports that, in the National Archives Scandal, the CIA claimed that classified documents that were inadvertently disclosed gives the government the right to treat them as classified (without being reclassified.) While there is no law against publishing classified documents, The Espionage Act prevents the disclosure of information relating to national defense.

The article also notes that, while no journalists have ever been prosecuted for publishing classified information, two members of the public have been prosecuted for disseminating information given to them by a government source. I agree with the author of the article, who states, “A generation ago, one could be confident that the press would not be prosecuted. Now, such a prosecution is cause for concern, even for those who think the First Amendment would ultimately prevail.”

According to an article in the Fall 2013 issue of National Affairs, while the Bush administration merely threatened prosecution of journalists for espionage, the Obama administration has actually engaged in seven such prosecutions. The article further reports that, while, by law, most government secrets are required to be declassified after 25 years, as of 2013 there were over 58 million pages of documents that had not yet been reviewed for declassification.

The danger in the government using the Espionage Act and other tools to prosecute reporters, attorneys, and others is that its misuse is stifling freedom of the press and freedom of expression, and is making government opaque, instead of transparent as it is supposed to be. The federal government has so much power with regard to federal prosecutions that it is virtually impossible for an ordinary citizen to defend him or herself if they decide to charge or indict you.

As Judge Jed S. Rakoff observed in his article, Why Innocent People Plead Guilty, The New York Review of Books, November 20, 2014, fewer than 3% of all federal criminal cases go to trial. Because of sentencing guidelines, high bail, and the high cost of a defense, an accused often finds himself in jail, unable to defend himself, and succumbs to a federal prosecutor in a plea bargain agreement. In a federal criminal case, the prosecutor has all the advantages.

As is observed in my latest novel, The Spy Files, in the words of James Madison, ‘Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom, and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech, which is the right of every man.’ If the government is allowed to spy on the people, that means that the people have no privacy in their thoughts or speech, which means that the government has taken away their liberty. This is the same government that has sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives in the name of liberty, and not just the lives of American servicemen. Patrick Henry said ‘give me liberty or give me death.’ I think his famous quote makes it crystal clear that the Constitutional framework of this country values liberty as an essential element of life, worth dying for. If something is worth such a sacrifice, how can the loss of it be justified for the argument that it will make us safer to give up our liberty and our civil rights? Are we to tell the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers of all the soldiers lost in foreign wars that it was all a big lie? That they died for nothing?

Kenneth Eade is an environmental and political activist, and author, who has been called by critics ‘one of the strongest thriller writers on the scene.’ For more information on his political and legal thrillers, including the latest, ‘The Spy Files’ go to http://kennetheade.com

[Candobetter.net Editor: Updated with spelling corrections and some links on 2 July 20145.] My reaction to the short drama between Mr Mallah, Mr Ciobo and Tony Jones on the Q & A program of June 22 is different in some ways from Greg Wood's in his article earlier today, "Zaky Mallah and the Zombification of ABC Australia", although I agree with much of it.

Firstly, I have been pleasantly surprised at the mix of participants and topics in the last few Q & A programs. I thought the program of the 22nd June 2015 was really great. I thought it was fantastic to get a man acquitted of jihadist terrorism on to raise the issues that we all know exist in Australia's terrorism laws.

I was glad that Tony Jones and his team, whoever was responsible, allowed a citizen who had been at the margins of society to speak in this forum. With my own fairly extensive knowledge of interview techniques, I thought I recognised Ciobo's tactics as calculated to shame and inflame Mallah. Effectively Ciobo's personalisation of a legal issue caused Mallah to have to defend his 'face'. (You lose 'face' if you are attacked in public; it is much harder to deal with if a powerful figure tries to shame you in front of a crowd.) Very few ordinary people could have seen that one coming, nor could they have dealt with it any better. Perhaps only a seasoned politician could maintain apparent equanimity at such a public insult. Then again, maybe Ciobo was blowing off some steam he had accumulated after taking a drubbing from Antony Hegarty (Singer of Antony and The Johnsons) and Linda Tirago , (American anti-poverty campaigner). I think his response to Mallah probably even took Tony Jones by surprise, although I would have to review the podcast to know, and I'm not inclined to get into things that far.

Mallah's retort may or may not have been meant seriously and it may not have really made sense. Maybe he did mean, "Well, if you're so unforgiving and rude to a once extreme Islamist who has since tried to reintegrate and become a positive influence and make amends, that might reinforce the decision of others who are contemplating joining violent Islamist sects."

Or maybe he just retorted the first thing that came into his head, like a slap response to a public slap.

It is also shocking that Ciobo accused Mallah of having got off 'on a technicality' if, as Anne Aly, 'Counter Terrorism Expert' insisted on the next show, on 29th June, he was well and truly cleared.

But I also have to say that the whole government rhetoric which we live daily and which formed the context of the controversy on Q & A seems to me like an exercise in hypocrisy and a subtle encouragement for people to go to Syria and join 'rebel fighters'. It is our government and its slimy billionaire mentors in the United States and NATO who demonise the Syrian Government as an excuse to continue to rape and pillage a whole swathe of countries in the Middle East, in a fine old tradition begun at the beginning of the 19th Century in the Great Game.

You don't actually have to be a marginalised muslim immigrant with poor education to be taken in by the 'reforming the brutal Assad 'regime' (which is actually an elected government, not an illegitimate 'regime') spin. Plenty of apparently educated and intelligent people simply believe whatever Mr Abbott, Fairfax and Mr Murdoch's team tell them, which I find amazing.

The variation that probably occurs with some young muslims is that, as well as hearing about the 'brutal Assad regime' they also hear of how the West is raping and pillaging the Middle East. And they hear from religiose Arab sources, (sponsored by the Saudis, Turkey, Qatar for instance - Australia and NATO allies) ranging from The Brotherhood through Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda, to ISIS, that Bashar al Assad's government is too secular and is repressing people in possession of religious truth. They rarely hear of how that government is the only one that provides Palestinians with effective citizenship and housing, nor that Syria has taken in a huge number of refugees from the surrounding countries wrecked and disorganised by western interference.

It must require extreme learning curves of sophistication and self-control for people who work out for themselves in the field that ISIS and various religious 'revolutionary armies' are actually led by crims, nutters and/or cynical politicians, often armed and financed by oil-states, the US and NATO, to then find some good in our own government and press, which endorse and amplify a host of transparently inadequate reasons to keep on bombing, invading and interfering with the Middle East.

Apparently Mr Mullah has also said some very nasty things endorsing sexual violence towards women. Well, I hope he learns that that is a pretty stupid and scurrilous attitude sooner rather than later. Now that everyone knows, let's hope girls stay well away from him.

Back to the ABC. Q and A did nothing wrong, in my opinion, in inviting a citizen with an unusual experience of notable relevance to the terrorism laws being debated on the program. Mr Ciobo, who is the Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Trade, should be called out publicly for the way he addressed Mr Mullah. As Greg Wood (in Zaky Mallah and the Zombification of ABC Australia) implies, Mr Steve Ciobo sounded as fundamentalist and inadequate to foreign affairs as an infuriated Mr Mullah; he just had a nicer suit.

But the clash over terrorism and dual citizenship was only a cherry on a multi-tiered cream cake. Three guests, Grahame Morris, 'Political strategist' and Steve Ciobo and Joel Fitzgibbon (shadow minister for Rural Affairs, right wing NSW ALP) came off the worse as they were bluntly and skilfully challenged on issues of class entitlement, privatisation, poverty and environmental and social responsibility by Antony Hegarty and Linda Tirado.

Was that why the government really got so mad? Because the blokes on its side were so woefully inadequate to their ideology being challenged?

On the 22nd the Q and A program had as a guest Mr Paul Kelly, long time editor of The Australian. One felt as if one were in the presence of Mr Murdoch himself, as Mr Kelly articulated what strikes me as a delusional corporate media belief that the ABC is massively left-wing biased. My impression was that Kelly and another guest, Tim Wilson who is a former Director of the IPA and Free Trade Unit at the Institute of Public Affairs[1], were there more to claw back the lost face of the people from their political side of the fence who had been trumped the week before by Hegarty and Tirado. In the context of the Prime Minister's sublimely inappropriately themed recommendation that 'heads should roll' their poe faces were kind of scary.

In my view, the Government and the ABC management should step right back from any punitive or even finger wagging exercises against Q and A, which really does an excellent job of mixing right wing with left wing and 'academiccy' with business, ordinary or even marginalised. At candobetter.net we are often justly critical of the ABC, including Q & A, but not in this case.

Good job Tony Jones. Keep at it.

NOTES

[1] Now he is the Human Rights and “Freedom” Commissioner, serving under its President Professor Gillian Triggs.

Material has been added to this article on 1 July 2015. The general deception and essential horror active within the current bullshit storm being unleashed around the ABC and Mallah is fully revealed by simply reading the factual account of Mallah's background, linked below, and then considering what was actually said in the Q&A program in context to that factual background.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaky_Mallah

As stated at the outset by ABC chief Mark Scott, Mallah had a democratic right to ask the question that he did on that program. Beyond that though, every Australian citizen had the right, and a vital and pressing need, to hear Mallah's question and the Minister's answer to it.

In true fact and context, it was Ciobo's answer that was horrendous. His reflex response was steeped in ignorance, intolerance, exclusivity and malice. It flashed a stark, Freudian insight into this current government's purpose and will toward our national 'Freedom and Security'.

But having correctly established Mallah's democratic right, the ABC Chief then immediately resiled from his base position to also acknowledge that 'it was a mistake' for Q&A to have Mallah on the show.

What the hell? How? Why?

That weak-minded contradiction gave the hounds of fascism ground to swerve around the sound bulwark of Scott's fundamentally correct, crucially important argument. This avenue of circumvention allowed the rabid attack to proceed unabated; upon the ABC, upon Scott's compromised 'defence', and upon democracy itself and the free social dialogue necessary to its healthy function.

True to type, the ABC journalist group have since let these baying hounds set the parameters of the ensuing media 'conversation'. Every attack dog from every available right-wing brood kennel has emerged to swell a lobotimised howl for the ABC'c blood. The cacophony is now so loud, so pervasive and so disturbing that even moderate liberal puppies like John Hewson apparently feel they also have to join in with harmonic yelps, lest they be found socially and personally wanting in some indeterminable but viscerally uncomfortable way. To my mind, Turnbull has established beyond all doubt that he is utterly amoral and unable to control the fascist horde he sleeps with, or that he has fully resigned himself to being a part of it as the pragmatic mechanism for best maximising his own personal achievement. Labor and the Greens are both absent from the fray regarding the truth on this matter.

Faced with this unmoderated, slavering onslaught upon their own character, and quite possibly their own professional existence, the ABC journo group has proven unable to execute a competent and forensic examination and prosecution of the pertinent facts and context of the situation. No wonder they fail so abysmally on critical issues that are removed from their direct, immediate personal well-being, such as population, housing affordability, etc. They can't even effectively argue the case for their own professional freedom and identity. How then can they possibly act in any useful way to mediate due protection of our rapidly diminishing democracy, social equity or resource sustainability. Especially now that they have gone down so badly in this ugly episode of media and party political gang rape. PTSD now forthcoming or what?

Things are not at all well in this Nation at present. Very clearly our democracy now depends heavily upon citizens acting to inform themselves and each other. The mainstream media cannot be relied upon.

Footnote:

Within all of this it is also imperative to recognise that the frenzy and consternation of this attack upon the ABC has served to utterly obliterate any useful attention toward the nature of Government intent and character that was revealed by Minister Ciobo in his interchange with Zaky Mallah. Maybe the ABC is not in fact the primary objective of the current political exercise. Rather it is a subsidiary victim for the aggressors, although a desirable one nonetheless.

Notably, and perhaps shamefully, Tony Jones initiated this cover-up of spontaneous, 'pants-down' revelation of awful truth when he immediately declared that Zaky's final incisive observation be 'struck from the record'. What on earth did he mean? Zaky's comment can't be excised from the public record as its recording is not limited to a contained, formal transcript from which it can be simply and completely struck. It is recorded on public, readily reproducible media. It would have to be blasted out of its public domain existence by a campaign of mis-information and intimidation, which is exactly what has now been achieved.

Surely Tony's declaration at the time wasn't the invocation to begin this ensuing spiritual cleansing. Rather, was he simply prescient of its imminent arrival and reflexively at pains to be not too far on the wrong side as it unfolded? Which begs the question, just how well trained are the ABC cohort? Are they Pavlov's reporters, conditioned to familiar non-threatening ground by the constant bell-ring of the baseless but unchallenged accusation of them 'all being lefties'. My god! Why do they fail to challenge this inaccurate, essentially meaningless and effectively limiting generalisation of themselves as a work-group? Do they actually embrace the wistful but practically disabling and pathetic romance of it? Where might such a high profile embodiment of meaning render a real 'leftie'? As a pathological nut-bag or extremist? No wonder then that the parameters of social discourse have mutated so far to the right. And so excruciatingly clever to employ the self-absorbed narcissism of 'authentic' and wannabe celebrity journo's as vectors to deliver this mutation.

If the ABC journo group do actually embody the contemporary definition of being 'lefties' then I am indeed down a deep, dark rabbit hole and am in desperate need of the right drugs and/or implements to get back out again... and quickly please. Mind control is not the product of compulsion by the aggressor. It is one of submission by the victim. However no one person is an island. At some point within the labyrinthe of perceived reality and illusion we all need to access, and also to provide, some collective help. 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' is an old film with a modern message in this regard. I've no doubt that Zaky could certainly do with some collective support right now. He deserves recognition of the merit of his basic position, and for his stoic courage and relatively calm consistency in the face of persistently mendacious attack, unreasonable accusation and confected collective hate being variously levelled at him by the voices of political neanderthals and 'progressives' alike. In this regard, Waleed Aly should very particularly bow his head in shame over his own efforts interviewing Zacky on a recent episode of The Project.

Thanks Zaky. Your effort has helped me to understand things more clearly than I did. However, with that understanding I also do feel more endangered, not by you, but by the horrific nature, breadth and scale of the social response to you. By many real measures, this country is not as safe as it once was. The enemy is how we think, or are lead to not think, about important things.

Melissa Parke, ALP Member for Fremantle, West Australia, was the only MP to dissent against the passing of the new so-called anti-terrorism laws in Australia, which make huge changes to our privacy and civil rights. Ms Parke (10:45am) — I wish to start my comments on this Bill by making reference to a case that came before the House of Lords in relation to the detention of foreign terrorist suspects indefinitely without trial under the UK's Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act, where Lord Hoffman, in a dissenting judgement, said:

"This is a nation which has been tested in adversity, which has survived physical destruction and catastrophic loss of life. I do not underestimate the ability of fanatical groups of terrorists to kill and destroy, but they do not threaten the life of the nation. Whether we would survive Hitler hung in the balance, but there is no doubt that we shall survive Al-Qaeda. The Spanish people have not said that what happened in Madrid, hideous crime as it was, threatened the life of their nation. Their legendary pride would not allow it. Terrorist violence, serious as it is, does not threaten our institutions of government or our existence as a civil community.

Published on Wednesday, 01 October 2014 10:44

... The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these. That is the true measure of what terrorism may achieve. It is for Parliament to decide whether to give the terrorists such a victory."

Tony Abbott made a speech to the IPA in 2012 in which he referred to the Coalition as the "freedom party". However, as Prime Minister Mr Abbott now believes that "the delicate balance between freedom and security may have to shift" and that "there may be more restrictions on some so that there can be more protection for others."

I do not support a number of key elements in this Bill, and I am aware there are further even more controversial Bills coming before the parliament in the near future.

I question the premise of the government's general approach to this area of policy, which is essentially that freedoms must be constrained in response to terrorism; and that the introduction of greater obscurity and impunity in the exercise of government agency powers that contravene individual freedoms will both produce, and are justified in the name of, greater security.

So far the debate on this issue has occurred within a frame that posits a direct relationship between, on the one hand, safety and civility in our everyday lives and, on the other, the powers that impinge upon and make incursions into individual freedom.

If we want to continue our lives free from terrorism and orchestrated violence — so the argument goes — we have to accept shifting the balance between freedom and constraint away from the observance of basic rights and towards greater surveillance, more interference, deeper silence.

Let me say that no one should be fooled into believing it is as simple as that.

The truth is that the remarkable peace, harmony, and security we enjoy in Australia is in fact produced and sustained by our collective observance of freedoms and human rights, rather than existing in spite of such values and conditions. It is wrong to say that we have been complacent about security on two counts. First, because we have strong, well-resourced, and competent security agencies, and second because our commitment to a way of life that puts faith in freedom, respect and tolerance, that puts faith in democracy and the rule of law, is itself productive of peace and shared security.

These are the reasons we must be so careful when we legislate to constrain those freedoms — because contrary to the reductive argument that says we're making a straight trade of less freedom for more safety, the reality is likely to be, and indeed has proved to be many times in the past, that constraining our fundamental liberties achieves nothing more than making us less free and in fact does ourselves harm through licensing the abuse of powers.

In the wake of the past few weeks' delivery by government, assisted by many media outlets, of "existential threat" and "panic/don't panic" messages, many people in the Australian community feel understandably confused and anxious. Members of Australia's Muslim communities may fear that the PM's 'restrictions on some' message applies particularly to them. If that is the case, then surely it is an approach that can only foster fear, mistrust and division, the very opposite of what is needed in terms of investing in community harmony, safety and human security in its broadest sense.

[Speaker], I recognise the process by which this Bill has come forward – and of course I understand that it contains a number of amendments to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act that represent unobjectionable adjustments put forward off the back of the Report of the Inquiry into Potential Reforms of Australia's National Security Legislation.

I am also grateful for the recent consideration of the draft Bill provided by the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence and Security (JCSIS), and I believe the amendments the Committee has recommended represent improvements – but not, in my view, sufficient improvements.

One critical point to grasp is the fact that the proposed laws are not a response to recent events involving the emergence of Islamic State, and the existence of people with criminal intentions based on their adherence to an extreme and deranged world-view.

It was a surprise therefore to see the editorial in The Australian on Monday where, under the heading 'Homegrown terror threat needs new tools to fight it', it rushed to conclude, "The new counter-terrorism laws are not an attack on free speech; they are a protection against an evolving threat" before acknowledging that "Any new counter-terrorism laws should be scrutinised by the parliament" and that "There is also a role for the media and other non-government groups, to offer analysis of proposed laws alongside laws currently operating".

That analysis and commentary certainly should be occurring, but it's hard not to have the sense that there is too much fierce agreement in this space at the moment as a result of people believing that we currently face some completely new and unprecedented terror threat.

The reality is — as we have seen from very well publicised operations recently — that law enforcement agencies have clearly been able to operate effectively on the basis of existing laws and there has not been convincing evidence of inadequacies in the existing legal framework that warrant the broad extensions of powers we see here. I am particularly concerned that this Bill entrenches and amplifies the lack of protection for whistleblowers regarding intelligence information and penalise with up to 10 years jail the legitimate actions of journalists and others doing their jobs in holding the government to account in the public interest.

There have been numerous examples of governments, defence, intelligence and law enforcement agencies here in Australia and elsewhere abusing their powers that have only come to light via Wikileaks, Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers regarding for instance the improper mass surveillance of civilians, the misuse of our aid program, and spying on foreign governments, including for the commercial benefit of corporations.

There are concerns that the legislation does not make any distinction between someone acting to sabotage a security intelligence operation and potentially putting security officers' lives at risk, which should rightly attract significant penalties, and persons disclosing information in the public interest where no such danger is present, but which may for instance be politically embarrassing.

It is no comfort from the Explanatory Memorandum that there will be a prosecutorial discretion to consider the public interest when deciding whether to prosecute a person — this kind of consideration should attract a specific exemption in the legislation — otherwise there is a very real danger that the provisions will produce a chilling effect on the willingness of the media to report legitimate matters of public interest.

We are assured that the significant impunity for breaking the law that is granted to security officials engaged in SIOs only applies when the officers are carrying out their duties as authorised and is not a green light for corruption or abuse of power. It is unsatisfactory in my view that the external oversight of special intelligence operations is limited to the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, rather than the more extensive oversight that applies to the AFP's controlled operations. The Member for Denison has highlighted the deficiencies in Australia's oversight of intelligence services relative to other countries such as the UK.

On the question of press freedom and media scrutiny, the editorial in The West Australian yesterday took issue with the new specific provisions, arguing that "they fail to strike a balance that does not unduly limit the ability of journalists to report on matters of national security. Any controls of this sort must be carefully considered and minimised. In this instance, there is a concern that the impetus to act on the terrorist threat may have led to the proposed laws being rushed and not considered as fully as they might have been."

And I would contrast the curious yet telling gulf between the nicely timed, neatly packaged and government facilitated media access to the recent AFP anti-terror operations and the utter silence, stonewalling and denial of access to operations that involve asylum seekers.

On this I agree with Mark Day, who wrote in Monday's Australian that,

"Last week we saw much commentary about how state and federal police provided on-the-spot video and still pictures of their raids against a terror group believed to be planning a random beheading in Australia.

How fortunate it was for the government that the raids came precisely as the parliament was considering new anti-terror powers — tougher laws to protect our freedoms by removing them. Raids of this nature involving 800 coppers for one arrest are obviously newsworthy. Police PRs were beside themselves with delight. You want pictures? How many? They fed the narrative of a government alert and anything but insouciant.

Now make the obvious comparison. For more than a year the government has refused to give any detail about any "on sea" activity related to people smuggling or asylum-seekers. This is because secrecy suits it. Secrecy is the government's starting point."

I understand that one of the legitimate bases for this Bill is the necessary adjustment to cover the kinds of technological change that have occurred over the last twenty years and I note the considered comments of the Shadow Attorney-General in this regard. I nevertheless have concerns about the scope of the provisions, especially in relation to computers and computer networks, including access to third-party hardware or communications. These provisions are the equivalent of a physical search warrant for a house that allows you to search an arbitrary number of other houses.

The JSCIS Report notes that public submissions were made by the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law calling for two categories of improvement in this area: the first being a 'minimal intrusion' test requiring other options for acquiring the required intelligence to have been used before ASIO has recourse to a computer network or third-party asset or communication; and the second being a further refinement in terms of scope so that a warrant would only access those parts of a target computer that are reasonably necessary for the acquisition of the relevant intelligence.

Unfortunately neither of these sensible proposals were taken up as recommendations. Instead the broad requirement that access must be 'reasonable in all the circumstances' was considered sufficient.

In my view, this is one of the clear areas where we may be licensing the potentially improper infringement of privacy and the possible misuse of personal information and communications without due consideration to the dangers involved, and without due care and restriction when it comes to those powers.

For an example of how this government regards the so-called balance between security and freedom, one can look to the proposed abolition of the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor. The Prime Minister announced the abolition of this critical office and function earlier this year as part of its 'war against red-tape'. Other casualties of this bizarre war of self-harm include environmental protections, financial services safeguards, and the framework to address climate change and encourage the development of renewable energy. In this way, the so-called war on red tape is unpicking the vital threads of our social fabric, our social compact.

With this Bill, the essential oversight of security legislation and powers is being undermined when it should be strengthened.

As others have noted, the Attorney-General was an active member of the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence and Security when the Committee issued a report with respect to the very legislation we debate here, calling for the assessment of the draft bill by the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor. Of course, thanks to the government, that position has been vacant since April, and was to be scrapped.

I am glad that as a result of the outcry on this aspect of security oversight in particular, the government has reversed its position – though unfortunately not in time for this Bill to have been appropriately scrutinised.

I believe that at the very least this legislation should incorporate sunset clauses so that the provisions can be subject to review and discontinuance if not found to be necessary.

[Speaker], I want to conclude by returning to the point I made at the beginning about what is really at issue when we expand the capacity and power of state agencies to infringe upon the privacy and freedom of citizens, and at the same time constrain the ability of citizens to examine and discuss the use of those powers.

There is a lot of talk about the danger of complacency when it comes to security threats, including terrorism. I don't see evidence of that complacency, and none has been put forward. Australia is a remarkably secure and peaceful nation. Our law enforcement, intelligence, and defence agencies and personnel do excellent work on our behalf.

If there is any complacency, it is in relation to the very real dangers that lie in failing to recognise, value and speak up for our fundamental rights, values and freedoms. We have seen what happens when state agencies exercise improper power without effective safeguards; without effective oversight and accountability mechanisms.

We'd do well to reflect upon this now as we consider changes in this Bill and in others that seek to re-set our laws and values in ways that may not only be ill-designed to protect us from the dangers and horrors we seem inclined to over-state, but might in fact wear and fray the fabric of our freedom, trust, and faith in government.

This article contains James Sinnamon's submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) which wants to pass new laws to make all your emails and other internet transactions up to two years back accessible to the Australian Government. "If Australian governments were serious about protecting Australians from terrorism, they would not have given transnational corporations with interests in every kind of industry including military total access to information about resources and infrastructure relating to location and operation of power, water supply and telecommunications, land-use planning, national statistics, scientific research institutions and banks. What is left, I ask, for terrorists?" (James Sinnamon)

Also published on Global Research.

Australian Government wants to read your private business and personal correspondence

The Australian Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) paper claims that Australia faces terrorist threats and that, in order to defeat these threats:

1. It is to be made an offence for any citizen to fail to "assist in the decryption of communications". In other words, each Internet user may not refuse to give to government agencies a copy of his/her private encryption key so that all his/her electronic business and private correspondence can be read by police and security agencies.

2. It be required that data transmitted by all Internet users be retained for up to two years by their respective Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

So, if these proposals become law, Internet users will be required to allow police and security agencies to read all business and personal correspondence and data uploads, as well as any more going back up to two years.

Nowhere, in the discussion paper, has it been shown how these sweeping powers could have prevented past acts of terrorism or other criminal acts from being carried out on Australian soil.

In Chapter two, Interception and the TIA Act, the paper notes the greater power and sophistication of communication technologies made available to terrorist and criminal organisations since 1979 when the current Act was enacted.

However, no-where in the paper is the commensurate increase in sophistication and power of surveillance technologies available to police and security agencies acknowledged or factored in.

If the paper acknowledged that the government possesses equal and possibly superior surveillance technologies to non-government agencies, I believe that the basis of these proposed changes to the law would be nullified.

One-sided appraisal of technology fails to admit Government already technologically well-empowered

From their present one-sided appraisal of technology, the Committee has made a breathtaking leap of logic by claiming that only by, in effect, treating all Australian Internet Users as potential terrorists or potential criminals and by subjecting them to the surveillance that only criminal and terrorist suspects were previously subjected to, could the law enforcement authorities and security agencies provide us with the protection that they were previously able to.

The report shows how current targeted surveillance powers have been effective in thwarting numerous crimes:

"In 2010/2011 there were 2441 arrests, 3168 prosecutions (2848 for serious offences) and 2034 convictions (1854 for serious offences) based on lawfully intercepted material. 2 Law enforcement agencies made 91 arrests, 33 prosecutions and obtained 33 convictions based on evidence obtained under stored communications warrants.

"These figures may underestimate the effectiveness of interception because a conviction can be recorded without entering the intercepted material into evidence. Interception also allows agencies to identify criminal connections, ...

"Telecommunications data is commonly the first source of important lead information for further investigations and often provides a unique and comprehensive insight into the behaviour of persons of interest." (p14)

The discussion paper fails to explain why, if this was possible under existing laws, the proposed additional powers are necessary.

Four cases in which suspects have been convicted of conspiring to commit terrorist acts are also cited, but, again, the paper fails to explain why, if this was possible under existing laws, the proposed additional powers are necessary.

Australian participation in illegal wars

How can Australia expect other nations to respect our own sovereignty and territorial integrity, when it has failed to accord that respect to other nations?

Since 1991, Australia has participated in three illegal wars under false pretexts: Two against Iraq and, our longest ever war, in which we are still engaged, against Afghanistan. As a result of the wars against Iraq and sanctions in which Australia participated, some estimates put the death toll as high as one million.

The 1991 war against Iraq was launched after Iraq had been cynically tricked into invading Kwait by the then ambassasor to Kuawit April Glaspie, who has since disappeared from public view. In order to overcome opposition to that war, the "Incubator babies" story, in which cruel Iraqi invaders were said to have thrown babies out of incubators onto hospital floors was fabricated. In 2003 it was claimed that Iraq posed a threat to the world with its renewed Weapons of Mass Destruction program. This claim was demolished in 2003 before the US Congress of CIA by CIA agent Valerie Plame, who testified that she had found no evidence of Iraq WMDs.

False flag terrorism

No-where in this discussion paper is another source of terrorism acknowledged, that is false flag terrorism. False flag terrorism is carried out by governments seeking to justify repression and gain political advantage by blaming the terrorism on opponents. Earlier this year, although it denies this, the Syrian Government was accused of having committed the Houla Massacre, in which 108 men, women and children were murdered in order to blame their deaths on the opposition Syrian National Council.

It was because the Syrian government was blamed for the Houla Massacre that the Australian Government expelled the Syrian Ambassador from Australia and imposed sanctions against Syria.

In October 2005 the late former President of Indonesia, Abdurrahman Wahid said, in an interview with SBS, that he believed that either the Indonesian military or the Indonesian police planted the second larger bomb which destroyed the Sari Club on 12 October 2002.[1] 202 people including 88 Australians perished in those attacks known as the Bali Bombing attacks.

Many credible figures including Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bowman, the former Director of Advanced Space Programs Development for the U.S. Air Force in the Ford and Carter administrations, believe that senior figures in the Bush administration were complicit in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in which almost 3,000 residents of the United States died. I stated my agreement with Lieutenant Colonel Bowman in my submission of 7 September 2009 to the Australian parliamentary Inquiry Into Human Rights on 7 September 2009.[2] I include a copy with this submission. [See copy as Endnote 7.] Until earlier this year that submission was posted on the Federal Parliamentary web-site along with all the other submissions.

In 1963, the US joint Chiefs of Staff put to President John F Kennedy that the US military stage apparent hijackings of civilian aircraft, terrorist murders and apparent military attacks against United States military bases in order to put the blame on Cuba. this proposal was known as Operation Northwoods.[3] Fortunately, President Kennedy rejected that proposal before he was sadly murdered.

Privatisation of Institutions and information

Successive Australian governments, both state and federal, have deregulated and privatised institutions and their information and outsourced services from the time of Keating. They have done this without the permission of the electorate, which has never been asked, as Financial Review Editor, Laura Tingle, recently put forward in her Quarterly Review essay, "Great Expectations,".[4] Corroborating Tingle's observations, sociologist, Sheila Newman wrote that,

"With deregulation and privatisation (under Hawke and Keating), governments dissolved the very institutions that gave them power. Because of Hawke and Keating’s actions, Australian governments now have so little power that they are unable to satisfy the promises they make at election time to the electorate."

How can Australian citizens trust governments which are now almost powerless against corporate interests to represent their citizens? How can the Committee ask Australians to cede yet more power and information to feeble government powers that have shown undeniable trends to privilege corporations like News Ltd with lax media ownership laws even when British parliamentary inquiries have exposed their management as condoning and encouraging spying at every level? How can the Committee ask Australians to cede yet more power and information to governments which have allowed a myriad of private fly-by-night organisations to take over our entire telecommunications system, power, water and other utilities, resulting in so many complaints that states have now replaced one omsbudsman with many omsbudsmen?

If Australian governments were serious about protecting Australians from terrorism, they would not have given transnational corporations with interests in every kind of industry including military total access to information about resources and infrastructure relating to location and operation of power, water supply and telecommunications, land-use planning, national statistics, scientific research institutions and banks.

What is left, I ask, for terrorists?

Surely Australia's best defense against terrorism lies in Australian citizens being able to protect their own interests and privacy from government and commercial organisations? Who else can they really trust?

Conclusion

To the extent that Australia faces a terrorist threat at all, the paper offers no practical proposal of how to meet that threat. In all likelihood, greater surveillance at the hands of Governments and security agencies, which have done so little to earn the trust of Australians, will only serve to make larger numbers more apathetic and less able to act if they see evidence of real terrorist threats.

Australians need more civil rights, not fewer, to ensure that dark or incompetent processes cannot proceed behind a wall of secrecy and ill-informed authority in the name of security. It has been suggested that Australia could consider adopting the European Civil Code, also known as the Napoleonic Code, instead of its 'ad hoc British system'. In the EU, only Britain has failed to adopt this Roman Law based model. Australia needs a Civil Code of citizens’ rights, legally defendable, modelled on the French one to combat the disorganising forces of the markets and perceived threats to security.[5]

There is a great deal more in the 61 pages of this discussion paper than I have been able to properly address in the limited time available to me. Nevertheless, I believe this submission demonstrates that the measures proposed in discussion paper pose an unwarranted threat to the democratic freedoms of Internet users.

The proposals have never been put to the voting public and had this been done I believe that they would have been rejected just as the Australian public previously rejected a proposal to filter Internet traffic.

Accordingly, I ask that either the proposals contained in the discussion paper be rejected by Parliament or that they be put to the public in a referendum.

ENDNOTES

[1] "Miscarriage of Justice: Who was behind the October 2002 Bali bombings?" by Michel Chossudovsky at http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10931

[2] The submission I made to the Australian parliamentary Inquiry Into Human Rights on 7 September 2009 contained the following factual errors:

(i) Lieutenant Colene Robert Bowman did not serve on "President Ronald Reagan's Star Wars program." He had retired when Jimmy Carter was President.

(ii) Morgan Reynolds, who is listed in my submission, claims that the WTC Twin Towers were destroyed by particle beams from outer space and that the aircraft seen to fly into each of the respective WTC Twin Towers were, in fact, holograms, so cannot be considered a credible supporter of 9/11 Truth.

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

[4] Laura Tingle in "Great Expectations," Quarterly Essay, June 2012, p.34, writes: "Yet, here is the crucial point: voters weren't consulted about the changes - except belatedly at the ballot box, when both major parties were in fundamental accord."

[5] http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/politics/tingle-verbals-australians-in-quarterly-essay

[6] Loose paraphrase from last paragraph in Sheila Newman, "Tingle-ing Australians," in Independent Australia

#appendix" id="appendix">Appendix:James Sinnamon's 2009 submission to the Australian National Human Rights Consultation

National Human Rights Consultation Submission

AGWW-7T293B

Name: James SINNAMON

The following is a verbatim adaptation of the three page submission I presented to the Australian Federal Parliamentary Inquiry Into Human Rights on 7 September 2011. On this adaptation I have corrected one relatively minor factual error and noted one misjudgement which appeared on the first. These are detailed in the Appendix at the end of this document. (This adaptation is four pages in length rather than three pages. This is because of difficulty I faced in copying and editing with the Open Source Libre Office Writer program the original PDF document.)

Submission Text:

This submission disputes the entire justification for the draconian anti-terrorist laws that have taken away from ordinary citizens, basic human rights and civil liberties that were once taken for granted in Australia.

As few cannot be unaware the justification for these draconian laws and the associated imposts upon our daily lives such as airport security checks and the banning of the ownership of megaphones, deemed by former Prime minister John Howard to be a terrorist weapon was the spectacular and deadly terrorist attack of 11 September 2001, the anthrax scare that shortly ensued and a number of other deadly terrorist attacks that have occurred since then - Bali, the Madrid bombing and the London Tube bombing. Much of Australian public opinion had come to accept that the curtailments of our rights are a price well worth paying in order to prevent similar tragedies from ever occurring on our own shores.

OFFICIAL ACCOUNT OF 9/11, THE BASIS FOR ANTI-TERRORIST LEGISLATION, DISPUTED BY MANY CREDIBLE AUTHORITATIVE PUBLIC FIGURES

However, a large number of credible, authoritative and well known figures as well as a substantial sections of public opinion in the United States, and even more so, outside the United States question the official explanations of these attacks. They argue that the evidence that the attacks were perpetrated by a ubiquitous world wide terrorist network known as 'al Qaeda' has never been produced. They also argue that the investigations by the 9/11 Commission and the US National Institute of Standards

and Technology (NIST) failed to ask many critical questions and ignored a great deal of evidence submitted to them.

The supposed evidence of Al Qaeda's guilt that was given to NATO by Colin Powell in order to win NATO's participation in the so- called 'war on terror' has never been made public and the evidence promised by Colin Powell to the United Nations, that would have legally made the United Nations a participant in the 'war on terror', was never produced.

Many have therefore called for the holding of a new and thorough investigation that would properly examine all the physical evidence, take account of all witnesses' statements and have the power to subpoena key players in the events of 9/11 including former President George W Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice. Indeed, it seems as if the City of New York may very well soon be conducting its own investigation into 9/11 as the group New York City Coalition for Accountability Now (NYCCAN - http://nyccan.com) has succeeded in collecting, as of 14 June 2009, 47,767 signatures of residents of New York City which asks that New York City hold a ballot within 3 months to decide whether or not an investigation into 9/11 be set up by New York City. This number exceeds the number of 45,000 that would make the holding of the ballot mandatory.

Many who question the official version of 9/11 go as far as to argue that, because of mountains of physical evidence which contradicts the official story and the fact that senior members of the Bush administration have been caught out lying and contradicting themselves, there is a prima facie case that members of the Bush administration themselves were complicit in the September 11 attacks.

People who are calling for a new investigation include:

* Lt. Col. Robert Bowman, PhD, U.S. Air Force (ret). Colonel Bowman was a fighter pilot who who flew 100 missions in the Vietnam war. He served on the Star Wars program under Presidents Ford and Carter.
* General Wesley Clark, U.S. Army (ret) former head of NATO.
* Col. George Nelson, MBA, U.S. Air Force (ret). Colonel Nelson is an experienced air crash investigator who states that the physical evidence at the crash sites of United Airways Flight 95 flatly contradicts the official account. (see(http://www.physics911.net/georgenelson).
* Lt. Col. Guy S. Razer, MS Aeronautical Science, U.S. Air Force (ret).
* Raymond L. McGovern Former Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis, a 250-person unit responsible for political analysis of every country and region in the world.
* William Christison – Former Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis, a 250-person unit responsible for political analysis of every country and region in the world. 29-year CIA veteran. 29-year CIA veteran.
* US Senator Max Cleland Chief Economist, U.S. Department of Labor under George W. Bush 2001 – 2002.
* Morgan Reynolds – Chief Economist, U.S. Department of Labor under George W. Bush 2001 – 2002.
* Paul Craig Roberts – Assistant Treasurer of the U.S. Treasury under Ronald Reagan.
* Daniel Ellsberg – Author of “The Pentagon Papers” which told the world the truth about the Vietnam War.
* Paul Hellyer – Former Minister of National Defense of Canada.
* Michael Meacher – Former Under Secretary for Industry, Under Secretary for Health and Social Security, Minister for the Environment, and Member of the House of Commons (UK).
* Tony Benn – Former Member of British Parliament 1942 - 2001.
* Andreas von Buelow, PhD Former Minister of Justice (West Germany). Former Minister for Research and Technology.
* Horst Ehmke, PhD – Former Minister of Justice (West
* Germany). Former Minister for Research and Technology. • Francesco Cossiga Member, – President of Italy (1985 - 1992) and Former Prime Minister.
* Yukihisa Fujita – Member, House of Councillors (the upper house), National Diet of Japan.
* Jeanette Fitzsimons – Greens Member of Parliament, New Zealand, 1996 - present.
* General Leonid Ivashov – Former Chief of Staff of the Russian armed forces.

Many more who are calling for a new investigation are listed on the web site a href="http://patriotsquestion911.com/.

Abundant solid evidence in contradiction with the official account of the 9/11 attacks can be found on many sites including http://ae911truth.org (Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth) and http://911truth.org/.

If these people are right -- and I believe they are -- then Australia's efforts to combat terrorism are not directed towards where the real terrorist threat lies.

BALI BOMBING

In regard to the terrorist threat much closer to home, on 12 October 2004 former president, Abdurrahman Wahid said in an interview with SBS that he believed that either the Indonesian military or the Indonesian police planted the second larger bomb which destroyed the Sari Club. This allegation has never been properly investigated.

Before discussing the appropriateness or otherwise of the measures now in place to combat terrorism, the Human Rights consultation needs to evaluate firstly how real is that threat and secondly from what quarters the terrorist threat, if it exists, is likely to come from.

The Human Rights Consultation should therefore at least seriously look at the abundant evidence which stands in contradiction to the official accounts of terrorists atrocities in recent years and try to bring about renewed and proper investigations. Furthermore, it should give its full support to those people overseas who are seeking to bring about proper investigations into 9/11, the London Tube Bombings, the Madrid Train bombings, the Bali bombings etc.

Appendix to Submission to HRC: A correction to my original Submission and a comment

Robert Bowman: Of retired Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bowman who was the first person list as calling for a new investigation, I originally wrote, “He served on President Ronald Reagan's Star Wars program.”. In fact, he served under former Presdents Ford and Carter and had retired before President Reagan was inaugurated.

Morgan Reyolds: Morgan Reynolds holds views not shared by the mainstream of the 9/11 Truth Movement and which are easy for the 'debunkers' to debunk. These include that the WTC Twin Towers were destroyed by particle beams from outer space and that the aircraft seen to fly into each of the respective WTC Twin Towers were, in fact, holograms. Many people purporting to be 9/11 Truthers promote such views in obvious attempts to discredit the 9/11 as a whole. What motivates such a high profile 9/11 Truther as Morgan Reynolds to promote views which are damaging to the 9/11 Truth Movement is unclear. Had I been aware that he held these views I would not have included his name in this list.