Anzac Bridge farce shows how 'security' has cost us our freedom
Mike CarltonMay 3, 2008
We are still waiting to be told why real people - aka hard-working Australian families - were banned from last Sunday's unveiling of the statue of the Kiwi soldier on the Anzac Bridge.
Morris Iemma was there. The New Zealand Prime Minister, Helen Clark, and her startling teeth were there. Defence personnel from both countries oom-pahed back and forth for the TV cameras. But the public was banned. Ordinary folk who had turned up to see the show, many of them expatriate Kiwis, were ordered off the bridge by the police for "security reasons".
What were those reasons? Was there some clear and present danger, a threat to peace and order, life and limb? Did the ASIO spooks have word that, far away in his snowy mountain fastness in the Hindu Kush, Osama bin Laden had planned another atrocity for the occasion? Or was the State Government, growing more unpopular by the hour, fearful of a latter-day Captain de Groot galloping up with sabre drawn?
None of the above, I suspect. Put it down to arrogance and incompetence. The cops kept the public off the Anzac Bridge simply because it made life easier for them. When you give extraordinary powers to the police and "security forces" to boss people around they tend to use those powers. Not for any good reason. Like dogs licking their testicles, they do it because they can and it feels good.
We saw the same sort of thing happen at last year's APEC summit in Sydney, when the city was "locked down" (and aren't you sick of hearing that phrase?) behind a ring of steel so formidable it could be penetrated only by crack teams of highly trained ABC television comedians. No doubt we will see the same officious push and shove when the Pope is here for the World Youth Day jamboree in July.
Granted, the petty stupidity on the Anzac Bridge was not the end of the world, but the people who were turned away had every right to be angry. It was another example of the way the so-called anti-terrorism laws have chiselled away at our rights and freedoms in the name of security.
ON THE same subject, but far more serious, John Howard and Lord Downer should not be permitted to get away with the lies they fed us about the infamous American military commission set up to try David Hicks at Guantanamo Bay. While I think of it, add Philip Ruddock to the list.
Time and again these three wise monkeys assured us this commission would see justice done. It would be fair and proper in every way, conducted with scrupulous regard for the rights of the accused. "We are satisfied that the rules that have been established for the military commission will deliver a process which is consistent with the criminal justice system in our country," Howard assured the nation back in August 2004.
A year later, Lord Downer was equally firm. "We have examined very carefully the structure of the military commission," he huffed, with his usual fatuous air of wounded innocence. "We believe that the appropriate safeguards are in place to ensure that the trial is a fair trial."
At about the same time Ruddock felt able to announce, with bottomless understatement, that while these military commissions were "not precisely the same as our civilian courts dealing with criminal matters", they were nonetheless "an appropriate medium" for trying Hicks and his fiendish ilk.
The final nail in the coffin of their deceit was hammered home this week by Colonel Moe Davis, the US Air Force lawyer who had been the hapless prosecutor in the Hicks farce. Giving evidence under oath at the so-called trial of Osama bin Laden's former driver, Davis came clean. He admitted that the commission process had been politically driven from Washington and rigged for convictions.
And as he later told Time magazine: "There is no question they wanted me to stage show trials that have nothing to do with the centuries-old tradition of military justice in America."
It is possible, I suppose, that Howard and Co were not deliberately lying. The alternative, equally disgraceful, is that they were willing dupes of the Bush Administration, blithely unconcerned about an Australian citizen's rights at law.
DEMOCRACY demands an opposition to take the fight to the government. Sadly, I am afraid that Just-Call-Me-Brendan is not up to it. The heavy hitter the Liberals need in Canberra is Troy Buswell who - at the moment of writing - is the Leader of the Opposition in Western Australia.
For some days this week, Buswell stoutly fended off rumours that, as a bit of a jape, he had sniffed the seat of a chair shortly after it had been vacated by a female Liberal Party staff member. Eventually, choking back sobs, he conceded on television that he had sniffed as alleged.
It was a bravura performance. Buswell is ready for the national stage, in the lady-killing tradition of those two great Liberal knights of the realm, the late John Gorton and Billy Snedden.
SMH 3-5-8
http://www.smh.com.au/news/mike-carlton/security-has-cost-us-our-freedom/2008/05/02/1209235149846.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
.
" Do or not do, there is no try. -Yoda "
http://www.ebearweb.net
Bujinkan: Martial Arts of the Samurai and Ninja
http://www.ebearweb.net/bujinkan/
Stephen's Snaps
http://photo.ebearweb.net/
This week Chaweng Beach.
Simply nice photos, Landscape, Seascape, Underwater, The Northern Beaches Sydney.
