Jefferson Says

Dec 6, 2010 | Australian Values, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Democracy, Legal, OzPol Values, USPol, Values

Jefferson Says

President Kennedy told a gathering of Nobel Prize winners at the White House,

"I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

This post was first published ten years ago. Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States, was writing 200 or more years ago. His words were wise and prophetic. Especially today, particularly at this time when tyranny seems more than ever before to be threatening the democracy of the United States.

 

We the People

 

Thomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States, a man of the Enlightenment, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, one of the most influential Founding Fathers, who envisioned America as the force behind a great “Empire of Liberty”.

Sir Roger knows that his loyal readers are impatient to hear what the great Jefferson, Father of the American experiment and of whom all Americans are so rightly proud [except Glenn Beck] would have said about the Wikileaks matter.

Here is what he did say:

“ Information is the currency of democracy.

[ … ]

If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves.

[ … ]

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

[ … ]

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

[ … ]

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

Just so.

Sir Roger also notes that the Constitution of the United States begins with the words:

“We the People … do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America”.

Not 'we the politicians', or 'we the Executive Branch', or 'we the diplomats', or 'we the oil companies', or 'we the bureaucrats', or 'we the bankers', or even 'we the military'.

“We the People…ordain”.

Nothing could make clearer the source of all authority in the United States — as it is in every other democracy in the world —  and any authority arrogated otherwise is illegitimate.

 

Wikileaks Cablegate and Hunter S. Thompson

Dec 5, 2010 | Australian Values, Citizenship, Corruption, Cultural Values, Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Legal, Media Values, OzPol Values, Terrorism, USPol, Values, War

Wikileaks Cablegate and Hunter S. Thompson

 

Hunter S. Thompson said it, and he wasn’t a traitor:

“ America…just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

It needs to be amended to say “… used car salesmen and soccer moms …”

The first thing to say about the Wikileaks “Cablegate” is:

There are no surprises.
We all knew it.
We know they are liars.
We always have known.

It’s like that person who finally works up the courage to make an embarrassing confession, a clean breast of it, and haltingly admits that they have been living a lie, that they’ve been pretending to be one thing but hiding who they really are and what they’re really like. And all their friends say, “Well, duh. Everyone knew that! Tell us something we don’t know.”

We know that all governments spy and have no respect for conventions and even treaties when it doesn’t suit them.

We know what China is like, we know how toxic the Russians are, and how ruthless and ignorant the Chinese government is. We have always known what a dick Berlusconi is and what a wanker Sarkozy is, what an arrogant dork Rudd is, and in one way or another how fucked up almost every country, in the fact the whole world, is if you look at it in certain lights.

So there are no real surprises and the world isn’t about to change.

What has changed, and what all the fuss is really about, is two things:

First, the US Government has lost the most precious protection of a professional liar, plausible deniability.

Second, it’s not true simply that knowledge is power but that secret information is power and the US Government’s secrets are not secret any more.

The US government (amongst others) is exposed, the klieg lights are on and they have nowhere to turn, nowhere to go, no escape hatch to fall through in their embarrassment.

So they are making the ridiculous assertion that they have been wronged by being exposed spying on their friends and lying to their own people. They have been backed into a corner and we see the honesty of their snarling teeth.

But how did we know what we know?

It’s no thanks to governments, politicians or bureaucrats, or especially to FoI legislation. It’s not even really thanks to journalists who have known most of this but don’t report most of it, too.

If anything it’s thanks to TV and movie writers. Apparently there’s more truth than we thought in those spy thrillers we imagined were a bit fanciful and exaggerated.

What’s becoming clear is that the Enlightenment was an illusion. We’ve always thought that since the Divine Right of Kings went down the chute and representative democracy took hold, L’êtat is no longer moi and is now The People. There is after all, we have been fooled into believing, no other source of power or authority but The People. No special dispensation from a god, nor from a king.

Under our western-tradition democratic systems – as enshrined in laws and constitutions; as publicly and pompously promoted even by any number of unbearably bloated, unethical, pathologically untruthful power-hungry politicians and money-hungry plutocrats – it is we, we naïvely believed, who own the State and all its power and authority.

Politicians, diplomats, bureaucrats, police and other functionaries (we simple-mindedly thought) are our servants who owe their allegiance to us, as their employers and paymasters. We, we childishly assumed, as the actual owners of the information gathered by our governments, have a right to know that information.

Gullible fools!

In reality the world is governed by political elites, dynastic families and people with carefully nurtured personal and professional connections. The world is ruled by people who have an immovable and deep-as-hell belief in their own privilege and entitlement.

The world is ruled by corporations and vested interests. Probably the biggest vested interests are the world’s militaries and the corporations who rely on them. Reportedly a Pentagon spokesman complained, about news film of Iraqi soldiers killed by helicopter gunfire,

“ If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war.”

We, the people, are nauseatingly patronised by narrow minded, morally shallow, easily-bribed, power-mad, status-hungry, greedy people.

Clinton’s, and others’, position seems to be similar to that of Nelba Blandon, Nicaraguan Interior Ministry Director of Censorship:

“ They accused us of suppressing freedom of expression. This was a lie and we could not let them publish it.”

Wikileaks’ action is a broadside against an astonishingly powerful and impermeable machine. The intention is in keeping with the professed values of the Enlightenment which are publicly supported by all western-tradition democracies. But the true beliefs of the powerful are on open display around the world with calls for the assassination of Assange, who Republican Senator Mitch McConnell calls a “high-tech terrorist” [get a bloody grip!], the Swedes redefining rape to include the inadvertent breaking of a condom during consensual sex, and any number of politicians, including the awful Gillard woman, calling the publication of the leaks “criminal” and “illegal” when they simply are not. There is plenty of very senior legal opinion explaining in detail why Wikileaks has not done anything illegal>

But Gillard is fawning over the US – who have, by the way, broken international law and convention, undeniably and undenied – to traduce, and to remove protection from, Assange, an Australian national, in just the same way that Howard did with David Hicks.

And so “Australia” in time-honoured fashion is on its knees once again, begging please to suck America’s cock even though we know America despises us (as it does everyone) while telling us (as it tells everyone) it loves us and we’re the only one.

In the meantime the attempts to shut down Wikileaks have suffered from the Streisand Effect and there are now many mirror sites. The current site is available at http://twitter.ch On Twitter Wikileaks is posting news updates at http://twitter.com/#wikileaks You can find more information about the reaction to the leaks at the Wikileaks Facebook page.

So goodnight. Sir Roger leaves you for now with this piece of advice for Hillary Clinton from the Poet of the Enlightenment, Robbie Burns:

Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie,

O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!

Thou need na start awa sae hasty,

Wi’ bickering brattle!

UPDATE: Wikileaks posts “Sarah Palin says Julian should be hunted down like Osama bin Laden — so he should be safe for at least a decade.”

At the ABC’s Drum website Kellie Tranter says,

“ Yet a concerted program of personal vilification and an international manhunt continues. After all, hell hath no fury like bruised, frustrated Capitol Hill and Wall Street egos. Do political leaders really believe that Assange is the only person on the planet who wants governments to be open, transparent and accountable? Do they think he’s the only person who understands that our governments are almost pathologically incapable of telling the truth, or that they authorise the commission of despicable acts in our names behind hypocritical calls to freedom and democracy?

As of now (6/12, 7pm AEDT) there are 355 Wikileaks mirror sites, so best of luck with shutting them all down. Or up.

 

 

Update:

Republican 2008 Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said that “anything less than execution is too kind a penalty.” Surely this is criminal incitement to murder given that he has not been charged anywhere in connection with Cablegate and in fact has not broken any laws. Similarly, Mastercard has cut off Wikileaks’ services because it says Wikileaks has been engaging in “illegal activity”. Of course there is no legal basis for Mastercard’s assertion. There is clearly a little pressure and a little leaning on American companies by some powerful people. And, says the Guardian, in Canada ‘ “police are investigating whether there is evidence to proceed against a former adviser to the [Canadian] Prime Minister after he called for Assange to be killed. Tom Flanagan, now a professor at the University of Calgary, suggested on television last week that Assange “should be assassinated, actually”. 

The nature and fierceness of responses by these people throws its own light on the workings of the world and the people who work it.

 


 

Addendum:

While the Wikileaks saga is fascinating and enlightening, and while the case for “the more the merrier” certainly can be made, and that we have a right to the information about our own countries, and that politicians should tell the truth, perhaps we should also take a deep breath, stand back for a moment and ask ourselves whether we are ready for the kind of world in which nothing is secret and politicians are honest.

The emergence of such a world would see a seismic convulsion into confusion and discomfort and therefore perhaps calamity. Somalia anyone?

Are we big enough, grown-up enough, cohesive enough as a community, to manage it? Or have we been cradled and protected from the real world too long, so long that our muscles have become atrophied and we can’t stand up? Are we responsible enough as societies, or are we baby-booming tit-suckers who just want to sit in our playpens with an iPad while mummy sings soothing lullabies and cooks our pre-digested dinner?

 

 

Millennial Jubilation

Apr 13, 2010 | Arts, Australian Values, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Democracy, Fame, Freedom of Speech, Lifestyle & Life, Media Values, OzPol Values, Religious Values, Science Values, USPol, Values

Millennial Jubilation

 

 1,000

 

 

Today, Sir Roger celebrates his 1,000th post in 1277 days – or exactly 3½ years – since the inaugural, ungainly, embarrassing post – Minister von Rock Opens Australian Refujesus Exhibition – on 15 October 2006. Since then he has improved marginally, been mentioned in the Press and on numerous websites, and been included in the top 40 blog posts for 2007 at On Line Opinion.

He’s been #1 on Google for over three years and, better than that, he’s consistently beaten out the #2, his arch enemy immi.gov.

He won the Australian election, unseating the sitting Prime Minister in the process, and caused a landslide in the US Presidential elections. Perhaps more importantly he got rid of Mick Keelty.

He’s been congratulated by some of the people he most respects including Richard Neville, Stephen Poole and Club Troppo collectively.

He’s been threatened with the big government stick of the Crimes Act by silly old Immigration Dept clown, Bob Correll, and survived. In fact possibly Sir Roger’s proudest moment was his reply to Bob and the response that received, especially from Ken Parish who Sir Roger likes to think still had his marbles when he called it “quite possibly the best piece of passionate, angry polemic I’ve ever read, certainly on a blog. ‘Roger Migently’ is roused to extraordinary heights of eloquence.”

Ah, the olden, golden days …

Sir Roger has attracted 127,838 spam comments, some of which he has celebrated. (Sorry, 127,839 127,840 127,841 127,842 . . . . )

And it all happened because Howard and Beazley were in a race to the bottom to hijack Australian values from the people who really own them.
Us.
And the giant Sir Roger was roused to fight.

 

So Sir Roger has waited a few days since Post #999, hoping for inspiration befitting the global significance of this occasion, wishing once again to elevate himself to the heights of grandiloquence of which he was once capable.

And then, you know, he realised that self-aggrandisement was out of place.

Instead, his deeply-felt gratitude, especially to his readers, yearns for expression.

It is simple, open, soul-bearing transparency that is called for.

And so he has chosen to mark this special moment in an understated way with a simple yet gloriously compelling message which quietly expresses his beliefs. This is the sauce of Sir Roger’s strength, his balm and succor:

Produced by TheThinkingAtheist.com

 

 

May the Sauce be with you and may His Noodly Appendage be upon you and guide you safely through pirate-infested waters.

RAmen!

 

“Visa Bob”‘s Dept Ruins Yet Another Life

Oct 4, 2009 | Australian Values, Border Security, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Democracy, Immigration, Legal, OzPol Values, Values

“Visa Bob”‘s Dept Ruins Yet Another Life

Oh Dear … DIC’s ‘Very Bad Event’. Again

Mr Bob Correll,

Deputy Secretary,
Department of Immigration, Citizenship and Wrongful Detention

Shit, Bob,

(You don’t mind me calling you ‘Shit’, do you Bob?)

You and I go way back, Bob, and I know this will seem out of character to you but … I know it’s wrong. I know I shouldn’t. But unlovely as it is, Bob, I can’t help this feeling of smug superiority (you know, that feeling you always have, Bob, when it comes to other people).

Yet another “very bad event, a serious administrative error and a terrible circumstance,” according to Foreign Affairs Minister, Stephen Smith; the wrongful detention of Van Phuc Nguyen, a permanent resident who was detained in 2002 and held in Sydney’s Villawood Detention Centre for more than three years. Immigration officials – your officials, Bob – at Sydney airport did not recognise his visa – your visa, Bob.

How “holier than thou” are you feeling at the moment, Bob?

The longest term of wrongful detention in recent history according to the Ombudsman?

Yet another appalling miscarriage of justice perpetrated by your department and brought to light

  • not through the transparency of your department
  • not through your department’s decency or its ethical standards
  • not through the exemplary corporate behaviour you are expected to display
  • or the exemplary legal behaviour you are required to display as a government department
  • but only through the persistence of the aggrieved man and the efforts of an overworked Ombudsman.

Indeed, far from pursuing the decent and ethical thing to do – let alone the right and the humane action to take – according to the Ombudsman your department engaged instead in (typical-public-service-arse-covering) legal debate about your options.

And so poorly does your department understand moral standards that still it offers only a pittance in compensation for your department’s incompetence – $70,000 for the theft of three years of an innocent person’s life (less $12,000 for the government’s own legal costs, of course).

How much do you earn get paid, Bob? How much does the DIC head, Andrew Metcalf, earn? [About a quarter of it, as the joke goes?] It’s hard to find out but certainly more than $200,000 and probably in at least the $300,000 vicinity.

Do you recall telling me smugly about “the important business managed by the Department”?

Do you recall telling me in your patronising way about your deep concern for “Australia’s reputation overseas“?

I certainly recall your telling me that you considered my website “offensive”. And how can I ever forget your bullying threats of legal action under Sections 53 (c) (d) and (eb) of the Trade Practices Act 1974, Section 68 of the Crimes Act 1914 and Section 39(2) of the Trade Marks Act 1995.

Well, Bob, so much for the Important Business Managed By Your Department.

It wasn’t managed at all, was it?

So much for Australia’s Reputation Overseas, or your department’s reputation at home.

And Bob? I find your department’s clearly-evidenced inhumane, incompetent, arrogant attitude towards human beings far more offensive than you could ever find my website.

I am not a lawyer Bob, and neither, clearly, are you, but Joe Public – not to mention Van Phuc Nguyen – is entitled to question your department’s capacity to carry out its duties. He is entitled to question the justification of departmental officials to their juicy salaries. He might well ask,

“If the department has so comprehensively, so frequently and so predictably failed to manage its responsibilities, are departmental officials, or the department itself, represented by its senior executives, therefore subject to legal action for misfeasance1? And might mandamus2 be sought against the Department because of the department’s incompetence? If the Ombudsman has determined that Nguyen’s detention was “wrongful” then shouldn’t Nguyen, rather than being offered some insultingly token compensation by the department, be awarded punitive damages by a court?”

You gave a speech in 2007, Bob, in which you said,

… on our website, the department currently lists ‘seven important things you should do as soon as possible after arriving in Australia’:
1. Apply for a Tax File Number (TFN)
2. Register with Medicare
3. Open a bank account
4. Register with Centrelink
5. Register for English Classes
6. Enrol Your Children in School
7. Apply for a Driver’s Licence

You should have added:

8. Apply for release from Villawood.

 

Hey Bob? Why don’t you resign?

  

 

1 When a party fails to perform at all, it is nonfeasance. When a party performs the duty inadequately or poorly, it is misfeasance. …The terms misfeasance and nonfeasance are most often used…with reference to the discharge of…statutory obligations; and it is an established rule that an action lies in favour of persons injured by misfeasance, i.e. by negligence in discharge of the duty…The courts can find evidence of carelessness in the discharge of public duties and on that basis award damages to individuals who have suffered thereby.

2“Mandamus is provided for by Section 75(v) of the Australian Constitution. The duty sought to be enforced must have two qualities: It must be a duty of public nature and the duty must be imperative and should not be discretionary.”

Rights of Man

Aug 27, 2009 | Australian Values, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Legal, Lifestyle & Life, OzPol Values, Values

Rights of Man

Magna Carta 15 June 1215

We know where we stand on a Bill of Rights and we could argue for it but we don’t think we need to any more. John Howard has argued against it and that’s just about enough for us. The little shit has been so wrong about almost everything he has touched as he blundered cynically and sycophantically through his political career that anything he is against is almost certain to be the right thing to do.

…“ Mr Howard said MPs should not hand their decision-making powers to “unelected judges accountable to no-one”.

Just put this beside, say, Howard’s support for Guantánamo and the US military commissions – both legal black holes accountable to no-one but the “unitary Executive”.

Or put it beside the terrorism laws his government introduced, the rolling back of eight centuries of habeas corpus, the fact that the security forces and selected judges and magistrates were/are accountable for their actions not to Parliament and indeed to no-one but the Cabinet ministers, in secret.

The people have no right to know what they are up to. In fact knowing what they are up to, reporting what they are up to or probably even asking what they are up to could land you in gaol. This situation borders on (if it is not already) oligarchy. It is the sort of thing that the French Revolution was fought over, and that the Enlightenment was all about. And it is okay with John Howard.

Actually … where do “the people” fit in, for John Howard?

The idea that a Bill of Rights tears apart the fabric of civil society is a monstrous, cynical joke. Our entire legal and political system is based on bills of rights of one kind or another, in one way or another.

Magna Carta was a Bill of Rights; the English Parliament passed the Petition of Right in May 1628 which referred to rights secured in the reign of Edward III three centuries earlier:

IV. And in the eight-and-twentieth year of the reign of King Edward III, it was declared and enacted by authority of parliament, that no man, of what estate or condition that he be, should be put out of his land or tenements, nor taken, nor imprisoned, nor disinherited nor put to death without being brought to answer by due process of law.

V. Nevertheless, against the tenor of the said statutes, and other the good laws and statutes of your realm to that end provided, divers of your subjects have of late been imprisoned without any cause showed; and when for their deliverance they were brought before your justices by your Majesty’s writs of habeas corpus, there to undergo and receive as the court should order, and their keepers commanded to certify the causes of their detainer, no cause was certified, but that they were detained by your Majesty’s special command, signified by the lords of your Privy Council, and yet were returned back to several prisons, without being charged with anything to which they might make answer according to the law.

[ … ]

VII. And whereas also by authority of parliament, in the five-and-twentieth year of the reign of King Edward III, it is declared and enacted, that no man shall be forejudged of life or limb against the form of the Great Charter and the law of the land; and by the said Great Charter and other the laws and statutes of this your realm, no man ought to be adjudged to death but by the laws established in this your realm, either by the customs of the same realm, or by acts of parliament: and whereas no offender of what kind soever is exempted from the proceedings to be used, and punishments to be inflicted by the laws and statutes of this your realm; nevertheless of late time divers commissions under your Majesty’s great seal have issued forth, by which certain persons have been assigned and appointed commissioners with power and authority to proceed within the land, according to the justice of martial law, against such soldiers or mariners, or other dissolute persons joining with them, as should commit any murder, robbery, felony, mutiny, or other outrage or misdemeanor whatsoever, and by such summary course and order as is agreeable to martial law, and is used in armies in time of war, to proceed to the trial and condemnation of such offenders, and them to cause to be executed and put to death according to the law martial.

The Howard/Ruddock terrorism laws amount to this description of martial law (and in fact to terrorism themselves). Howard bulldozed all of these hard-fought rights and liberties, the history and traditions of law. And why? Because he believes in his heart that the people can’t be trusted with their own lives? Can’t be trusted with power? That power should remain in the hands of those special few who “understand” it? That rights ought not be defined but should be secret privileges that are in the gift of the few, to be dispensed as the favours of a benevolent ruling elite?

Well, as long as we do have our constitution they are not privileges and they are not in his gift to dispense to the deserving and the compliant and the mates. They are ours and we want them written down and enshrined so that people such as Howard — like the pigs in Animal Farm — can’t take them away.

Amnesty’s human rights act campaign coordinator Jenny Leong says …

“We need to remember that it was under the Howard government that so many of the human rights of this country and our reputation internationally for respecting human rights were eroded,”

she told ABC News Online.

The French declared the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789.

The first four Articles are:

1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.

2. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.

3. The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.

4. Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law.

In 1791 Thomas Paine wrote in Rights of Man:

“ The fact, therefore, must be that the individuals, themselves, each, in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist. 

It is essential to our freedom as individuals and as communities that this sentiment is remembered and written in stone. The agreement by all the people together to form a government and that this government belongs entirely to the people, that political parties are the servants of the people’s government and are not its owners, is the core of our democracy and freedom from tyranny.