Spelling It Out

Apr 30, 2007 | Australian Values, Corruption, Democracy, OzPol Values, Terrorism, USPol, Values, War

Spelling It Out

Okay, no surprise…

The Bush White House lied to the American people.

…Except that one of the people who knew it at the time, a US Senator, has dropped a “Bombshell on the Senate Floor”.

So here it is at last. Not the smoking gun we had before but the political mushroom cloud which should explode George Bush’s presidency and John Howard’s career. Should…but…you know…

US Senator Dick Durbin, who was on the Senate Intelligence Committee during the lead up to the Iraq war, explained the truth of what was actually going on behind the scenes in top secret intelligence briefings in 2002-2003 and how it compared with what the White House was spruiking publicly.

Durbin and his fellow committee members knew that George Bush and his administration were intentionally misleading the world but they couldn’t say anything:

Excerpt from Durbin’s statement:

“ The Intelligence Committee was meeting on a daily basis for top-secret briefings about the information we were receiving and the information we had in the Intelligence Committee was not the same information being given to the American people. I couldn’t believe it.

Members of this administration were in active, heated debate over whether Aluminum tubes really meant that the Iraqis were developing nuclear weapons, some within the administration were saying, “Of course not. It’s not the same kind of aluminum tube,” at the same time that members of the administration were telling the American people to be fearful of mushroom-shaped clouds.

But unfortunately, as a member of the Committee, he was sworn to secrecy.

“ We can’t walk outside the door and say, “The statement made yesterday by the White House is in direct contradiction to classified information that’s been given to this Congress…

And so in my frustration I sat here on the floor of the Senate and listened to this heated debate about invading Iraq, thinking, “The American people are being misled. They’re not being told the truth.”

Who also knew what Senator Durbin and his colleagues knew?

The President, George W. Bush.

The National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice had to know.

Cheney. Rove. Rumsfeld. Wolfowitz. Feith. Chalabi.

Obviously the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, had to know. What sort of a “man” will intentionally and knowingly lie, not just to his own country but to the entire world, knowing that the lies he tells will certainly lead to the premeditated, and unjustified, deaths and maiming of hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings? How does such a “man” choose to do that? How does such a “man” live with himself?

And then there are Tony Blair and John Howard. They must have been told the truth. After all, they are the United States’ most respected allies and George Bush’s best friends. He would not have lied his best mates into such a war.

So Howard knew there was no substance to – or at the very least, serious disagreement about – the so-called “evidence” which he used to take Australia to war (against the wishes of the people, by the way). Blair and Campbell even sexed up and fabricated evidence because even the lies weren’t convincing enough.

If Howard knew the truth he was murderously reckless with other people’s – and other people’s children’s – lives.

If Howard was told the truth he has no respect for, belief in, or sense of responsibility to the Australian people.

Or if Howard did not know the truth then the only alternative is that he is a gullible fool who credulously bought a pack of lies.

If Howard was not told the truth the so-called close and special relationship between the USA and Australia is a sham and an embarrassment.

If Howard was not told the truth the USA has no respect for Australia, and the alliance has no value.

If Howard was not told the truth he is a shocking judge of character with an appalling choice of friends.

A person who tells such lies to his country is a traitor and a criminal.
A person who premeditates the deaths of innocent others is a murderer.
A person who lies to commit premeditated slaughter on this scale is not just a mass-murderer. He is a criminal psychopath.

Sadly, although I believe this statement by Senator Durbin is explosive – because it blows away the last remnants of Bush/Blair/Howard’s pretence – I don’t expect to see it repeated on Page One in the mainstream media. But I would love to hear how the usual suspects play it down and excuse it. Let me guess.

“It’s old news.”

“I think the Australian public has moved past that.”

“How we got there is no longer the issue. What’s important is what we do now.”

Swallowing Bullshit Whole

Apr 27, 2007 | Australian Values, Corruption, Democracy, Media Values, OzPol Values, Terrorism, USPol, Values, War

Swallowing Bullshit Whole

Buying the War – Bill Moyers

How did the mainstream press get it so wrong about Iraq?

This may be the most “important” video you will see this year.
It’s a special program from Bill Moyers Journal on PBS.

Buying the War is a careful, thorough, chilling expose of how the American, and in fact almost the entire Western, mainstream media lost their scepticism, their perspective and their judgment along with all their highly-trained journalistic principles, swallowed whole the Bush administration’s predigested Iraq scam and palmed it off onto a gullible, frightened and sometimes hysterical public.

It is particularly urgent because the men who took us there are still in power and still in denial, still refusing to admit they made a mistake despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary – in stark contrast to the almost total lack of factual evidence which could support the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq in the first place.

John Howard stakes his career and his credibility on the assertion that he made a wise and well-informed decision. How excited he was that Australia had been part of providing solid evidence – the aluminium tubes, remember? – of Iraq’s nuclear program. Except they weren’t for a nuclear anything. He has never apologised for that. Never admitted it was a mistake. He will never apologise to the families (what is left of them) of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis whose death he is by collusion responsible for, or the 2 million Iraqi refugees, or the 2 million Iraqis internally displaced. Or to the thousands of coalition soldiers and civilians killed and maimed in Iraq.

But he made a big, big mistake.

Either he was a willing co-conspirator in the Iraq catastrophe or he was duped. In either case that is not good enough to be Prime Minister of Australia.

The same is true of John Howard’s echo-chamber, the right-wing commentariat of people like Albrechtsen, Ackerman, Bolt, Devine all the other friends of Rupert – apologists for the Groveller General who nevertheless will never (like him) apologise for the egregious errors of judgment and fact that they have made and propagated for so long.

[One of the arguments given by those who supported the war, including Howard and his sycophantic media cheer-squad, and current US Presidential candidates like Clinton, is that “everyone believed Iraq did have WMDs”. That is not true.

Values Australia didn’t believe it for a minute, not just because we are a government-certified political clairvoyant but because we studied the political context, we looked at the so-called evidence and the way it was presented, the people who were presenting it and their probable motives, along with the evidence against it and the credibility of the people who presented that.

Values Australia was not alone. Millions of people around the world agreed. The difference is that these people are not afraid of the US Administration, or Murdoch, or the electorate. The difference is that we did not think the deaths of others and the carnage which we predicted would be a fair price for others to pay to protect our careers.

Moyers talks to the most senior journalists, including those who bought the Administration’s line, like Dan Rather, and those who didn’t, like Knight Ridder and those who claim to be pawns, like Tim Russert.

He shows how the propaganda was manufactured. For example, the White House needed to “prove” that Saddam Hussein had an atomic weapons program. There were those intercepted aluminium tubes, but that was top, top secret. Even Cheney couldn’t talk about them. So what he did was to leak the story to the New York Times who, of course, published it and Cheney was then able to comment on the story the next day on Meet the Press with Tim Russert.

“ It is now public that he has been seeking to acquire … the kinds of tubes that are necessary … in order to build a bomb.”

The guy has balls. But they’re huge bags of bullshit. What he doesn’t have is a conscience or morality. He is a professional liar who has forgotten, if he ever knew, how to tell the truth. And he is one of John Howard’s greatest mates.

What is especially chilling is the masterful way in which the Bush administration, probably under the guidance of Karl Rove, manipulated a willing, compliant media and engineered the stories. Remember the “smoking gun” that was about to turn into a “mushroom cloud” – the urgency in that which supposedly justified the pre-emptive invasion? Over and over again. Al Qaeda/Iraq/al Qaeda/Iraq/al Qaeda/Iraq repeated and repeated until with no evidence whatever, and after any link had been soundly disproven, most Americans still believed (as many still do, and as Cheney to this day suggests) that Iraq was responsible for 9/11.

Watch the video here.

Perhaps the most telling moment is Dan Rather‘s admission of:

“ …the fear that if you don’t go along, you get the reputation for being a troublemaker. There’s also the fear that, particularly in networks, they’ve become huge international conglomerates. They have big needs, legislative needs, regulatory needs, in Washington. Nobody has to send you a memo to tell you that that’s the case. You know. And that puts a seed in your mind of, well, if you stick your neck out, if you take the risk of going against the grain with your reporting is anybody gong to back you up?”

Or to put it another way, you can’t trust the mainstream media, whether so-called “liberal” or not, because everyone is looking out for their own career. Doing your job honourably, by practising actual journalism and telling the public what you discover, comes a distant second. What you are always going to get is the administration’s line. And it’s exactly the same in Australia. (I know.)

Here’s part of the transcript of the program:

“ Four years ago this spring the Bush administration took leave of reality and plunged our country into a war so poorly planned it soon turned into a disaster. The story of how high officials misled the country has been told. But they couldn’t have done it on their own; they needed a compliant press, to pass on their propaganda as news and cheer them on.

Since then thousands of people have died, and many are dying to this day. Yet the story of how the media bought what the White House was selling has not been told in depth on television. As the war rages into its fifth year, we look back at those months leading up to the invasion, when our press largely surrendered its independence and skepticism to join with our government in marching to war.

How did the mainstream press get it so wrong? How did the evidence disputing the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the link between Saddam Hussein to 9-11 continue to go largely unreported? What the conservative media did was easy to fathom; they had been cheerleaders for the White House from the beginning and were simply continuing to rally the public behind the President – no questions asked.

ANZAC Reflections

Apr 25, 2007 | Australian Values, Democracy, Global Warming, OzPol Values, Values, War

ANZAC Reflections

We’re made of “Digger” stuff

M y father was in WWII. He went to Borneo, landed at Balikpapan.
Like most of those who went, he didn’t tell us much about the War.
But he did tell us one story.

They landed on the beach and because he was a Major he had a jeep and a driver.

The Japs had retreated but were still firing at the Aussies landing.

At the back edge of the beach was a small hut with its door open. As they drove past Dad noticed ropes hanging inside.

Now, Dad loved rope. And hoses and things you could “use for something”. He thought those ropes just might come in handy. So he told his driver to stop and he went to take a look. It was full of lovely huge hanks of rope all neatly hanging on their hooks. Just the thing for…something.

As he was looking around, getting ready to borrow one or two hanks of rope his driver came up and said,

“We don’t have time, Sir. We need to go on.”

So Dad sadly turned around, hopped in the jeep and drove off.

Less than a minute later the hut blew up.

An equally inquisitive soldier had entered the hut and lifted one of the booby-trapped hanks of rope.

And was blown to pieces.

What most amazes me about this story is that I and my younger siblings had not even been conceived. I owe part of the very fact of my ridiculously unlikely, extraordinary, magical and endlessly fascinating existence to that driver’s urging my father to eschew the rope. If he hadn’t, it would have been Dad who blew up and I wouldn’t be here.

Which blows me away every time I think of it.

So now thinking about ANZAC Day I think of the political profiteering that’s going on with the ANZAC legend.

It’s no longer a legend. It’s a myth.

It’s not only a myth; it has, as someone said, become secular religion with formal observances and complete with unquestionable dogma.

It’s now becoming increasingly difficult to engage with anything like the reality of the diggers’ experience. They are no longer real Australians. They have been beatified.

They inhabit the battlefields like flying saints, like angels. They were all as perfect then as they are portrayed now.

But they weren’t perfect. They were just Australians. Ordinary Australians. Mostly blokes. They didn’t really go to war because they had some highfalutin idea about the ‘ultimate sacrifice’.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Everyone was doing it. You didn’t want to look bad amongst your mates. And of course, yes, it was ‘the right thing to do’.

They were larrikins, some of them. It was a cheap way to see the world. They were kids. It was exciting. It was an adventure. It was worse to stay than to go. The last thing they expected was to be killed. Death in a distant country seemed…distant. And when they were faced with the ugly, terrible, terrifying reality of what they had got themselves into, then they faced the challenge in the way that makes us all Australian.

And if these things are not true they are more true than many of the things people are making up about them.

What I find especially offensive is the way children — too young and protected to be able to understand even dimly the horrors of war — are groomed and trotted out to spout the formulaic, cliche-filled, propaganda-ridden mythology about the heroes who just wanted to sacrifice their lives for their country.

The men and women who fought for Australia were heroes. But they didn’t feel like heroes. That’s not how we are. We do what needs to be done. How much of what we do on ANZAC Day is not after all about them? How much is it about us and the warm inner glow we give ourselves?

There are real and moving lessons to be learnt from this day. About us. About them. About the world. About war. I fear what it is becoming; because it is a misrepresentation of how it was and who they were; because it removes us further and further from the truth. That does not serve us at all. We are learning false lessons.

So their memory has been hijacked by profiteering politicians who cynically wrap themselves in the flag and smear themselves with diggers’ blood. And I’m not just talking about Howard. I’m talking about all of them and their various favourite media platforms.

Politicians do what they think is the pragmatic, clever thing. The diggers just did what they thought was “the right thing”.

That’s a real Australian Value.

We like to think that we do “the right thing” – or that we would do the right thing if the situation arose, even if it’s difficult, inconvenient or costly. We like to think that’s part of the Australian character.

That is why John Howard is backing the wrong horse with his climate change rhetoric. He’s betting on Australians’ selfishness. And it would be wrong to say that Australians aren’t selfish. Of course we are. We’re human. But one of the ways we are particularly selfish is for our children’s futures, and their children’s.

Australians do see global warming as a serious – really, a deadly serious – problem. We know that something should be done, has to be done, and that we should do it and have to do it. We know it’s up to us right now. We accept that we need to show leadership.

So we’ve been sucking in our breath and getting ready for the sacrifices that we know we will have to make in order to do the right thing.

In fact, in a way we’re kind of looking forward to meeting a challenge. We’re a resilient people. We’re resourceful, we’re clever. We’re ready. We’re ready to show what we’re made of – “Digger” stuff.

And then along comes John Howard and tells us it’s not so bad, we should wait for others to go first, it will be too uncomfortable, it won’t work, it’s too hard. It’s like telling the Swans to take it easy in the last quarter because they’re 30 behind and there’s no way they can make it up, so they may as well save themselves for the next game.

That’s just not how we do things around here. We put our bodies on the line and give it everything we’ve got, even if it seems hopeless. Even if it seems pointless. Defeat is not failure. Look at ANZAC Day.

Failure is not having a go.

John Howard is selling us short. He’s telling us that we are less than we know that we are, less than we truly believe we can be.

And we don’t like it. We take it as an insult. And so it is. He is showing us that he is less than we are.

We won’t like it when Costello throws money at us in the budget and in the lead-up to the election, either. We will take that as an insult. And so it will be.

We are ready to do the right thing about global warming and if Howard can’t be the leader he needs to be, we will choose someone else who better understands who we are — descendants of Diggers.

Don’t you understand, John?

Apr 8, 2007 | Australian Values, Citizenship, Corruption, Democracy, Legal, OzPol Values, Terrorism, USPol, Values, War

Don’t you understand, John?

It wasn’t about David Hicks:

How Howard fucked himself whether Hicks came home or not.

Hicks might go away out of the political limelight but the way Howard has treated him will be the reason Howard loses the next election. If he does, Howard has shown what he is really like and how he really works. We will never trust him on any issue, not security, certainly, and not even the economy, because he has outed himself as just one more sleazy politician, which he is (and always was), although less ethical and more unscrupulous than most.

The government can’t use the fact of Hicks’s conviction for electoral advantage or to support its anti-terrorist credentials.

They can’t say he got what was coming to him. They can’t admit they had a hand in his release. They can’t say they approve or disapprove of the sentence, (which is a big blow for Billy Bunter, Minister for Fishnets, who said before the “trial”:

“ Material support for terrorism is an immensely difficu… an immensely serious charge”

– such a serious charge that Hicks was sentenced to an “immensely serious” 9 months. It would probably seem an eternity, however, if Hicks was forced to listen to 9 months of Billy Bunter prattling on and on in his nauseating way.)

The LATimes reports Hicks’s prosecution saying that

“ Today in this courtroom we are on the front line of the war on terrorism, face to face with the enemy,”

[…]

“If Hicks was such a menace to Western security, as the U.S. government has alleged since his arrest in December 2001, asked staff attorney Ben Wizner of the American Civil Liberties Union, “why was he given a sentence more appropriate for a drunk-driving offense?”

No-one really believed that Hicks was a real threat or even a real terrorist. But it was politically expedient for Howard and his echo-chamber to paint him so.

Robert Richter, QC, one of Australia’s most experienced criminal lawyers, said in a commentary for The Sunday Age that the trial was a sham that had wholly discredited the Pentagon’s war-crimes process.

“ The charade that took place at Guantánamo Bay would have done Stalin’s show trials proud. First there was indefinite detention without charge. Then there was the torture, however the Bush lawyers, including his attorney-general, might choose to describe it. Then there was the extorted confession of guilt.”

All that is left is the nauseating and immoral way the Government utterly abandoned a fellow Australian, the way they “threw him overboard”, and that knowledge has sunk deep into the Australian political memory alongside the other blatantly cynical lie of “children overboard”; the way the Government railroaded him and sacrificed him to its own (hoped-for) electoral advantage and as a convenient platform for mealy-mouthed political posturing.

What Australians know is that it could have been them, or someone in their own family, that became a pawn caught in Howard’s cadaverous political claw. They know that Howard would not have helped them, either, unless he saw an electoral advantage, or until he saw electoral disadvantage in inaction.

And we have watched the apologists, the far-right echo-chamber of Ackermann, Bolt, Devine, Milne, Henderson et al characterise a process which has shredded and trashed all our concepts of decency, fairness, legality and justice, which is at best unlawful and at worst treasonous, as righteous. We have watched them spin the entire process and the outcome as proper and “justified”.

If the law and the values Australians have fought for could be so easily discarded for the sake of political gain, career advancement and a false sense of security in a world made increasingly afraid by our “saviours”, then the law and our values would be worthless. But they are not. And Australians know it.

Australians like their values and they reject the chatterers’ claims that what was done was justified.

Australians will not forget what Howard did to a fellow Australian to feed his own prideful pomposity.

Australians know that Howard is infatuated with the egregious vandalising of historical notions of justice which is the hallmark of the Bush administration and of the way in which Bush (and Rove and Cheney) have systematically politicised the American bureaucracy.

Australians have known all along that the entire Guantánamo Bay exercise was a legal stinkbomb. They now know for certain that the entire exercise was a political and not a legal process because they have seen the clear evidence that Hicks’s release was politically motivated and politically engineered – engineered to help a friend, John Howard, with his own political struggle.

Australians in their wisdom recognise the jaw-dropping cynicism of Howard and Bush in their machinations about the Hicks matter and Guantánamo. Howard supported Guantánamo, acquiesced in it and promoted it while the rest of the world, including the British, had long rejected Guantánamo as an abomination,

In September 2006, in Sydney, Britain’s last Lord Chancellor, now rebadged as its first Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, Lord Falconer, denounced Guantánamo as a “shocking affront to the principles of democracy”, accusing the United States of “deliberately seeking to put detainees beyond the rule of law…”

“ It is a part of the acceptance of the rule of law that the courts will be able to exercise jurisdiction over the executive.

“Otherwise the conduct of the executive is not defined and restrained by law.

“It is because of that principle, that the USA, deliberately seeking to put the detainees beyond the reach of the law in Guantánamo Bay, is so shocking an affront to the principles of democracy.

“Without independent judicial control, we cannot give effect to the essential values of our society.”

Appropriately enough, Lord Falconer made his comments in his Magna Carta Lecture. Magna Carta established constraints on the monarchy (or, now, the executive government). The concept of habeas corpus, a fundamental of British legal heritage, preceded even the Magna Carta. Habeas corpus enshrines the right of a person detained by the authorities to be brought before a court of law so that the legality of the detention may be examined. Habeas corpus was trashed in the US last year by Attorney General, Alberto Gonzalez, with the assistance of the Republican Party and probably under the guidance of John Yoo.

John Howard, by acquiescing in the inhuman abuse that is Guantánamo Bay, and by laws passed in Australia last year, is complicit in this fundamental assault on British-heritage legal systems.

Howard openly declared that Hicks had broken no Australian laws and therefore he was pleased to be able to have him punished by another country under their illegal system.

He was willing to, and did – as did both Ruddock and Downer – declare him guilty without his having ever been charged with any offence or any evidence tested. This is in contrast to long-standing Australian values: the right to a fair and speedy trial and the presumption of innocence.

Even Texans have tried to explain the traditional American system to other Americans:

“ In Texas, we have a fair trial and then the hanging,”

said Texas Republican, John Cornyn, ‘one of the White House’s staunchest allies on Capitol Hill’. He was defending Gonzalez’s right to be heard before being “sentenced” to political death over the US Attorneys affair.

And conservative(-ish), Andrew Sullivan, in The Atlantic Online, says

“ So Cheney goes to Australia and meets with John Howard who tells him that the Hicks case is killing him in Australia, and he may lose the next election because of it. Hicks’s case is then railroaded to the front of the Gitmo kangaro court line, and put through a “legal” process almost ludicrously inept, with two of Hicks’ three lawyers thrown out on one day, then an abrupt plea-bargain, with a transparently insincere confession. Hicks is then given a mere nine months in jail in Australia, before being set free. Who negotiated the plea-bargain? Hicks’ lawyer. Who did he negotiate with? Not the prosecutors, as would be normal, but Susan J. Crawford, the top military commission official. Who is Susan J. Crawford? She served as Dick Cheney’s Inspector General while he was Defense Secretary.

My, what a surprise to see the ghastly hand of Dick Cheney over all of this!

Howard may wish that the argument was over and Hicks would cease being an issue. But the treatment of Hicks is already the main issue and the chain around Howard’s ankle attached to a block of concrete. It doesn’t matter if no-one ever mentions it again, because Howard has lost his credibility and his image as an Honest John, as someone dedicated to protect Australians, as someone who stands up for Australians. The Howard reputation is shot and nothing he can do now can change that.

Howard has shown himself to be a latter-day Pontius Pilate.

He washed his hands of Hicks and everyone knows it.

He did the same with Nguyen Tuong Van and left him to hang out to die in Singapore.

He showed similar compassion for Robert Jovocic.

He meekly acquiesced when AFP Commissioner, Michael Joseph Keelty, APM, delivered the Bali 9 – Australians who could have been dealt with in an Australian court – to the Indonesians on a deadly platter, potentially to face a firing squad.

On the other hand he showed actual concern and support for his “mates” in AWB through his and his Ministers’ timely amnesia.

Let’s be clear. Hicks is a dickhead. Probably. He is not a popular hero. He is no Ned Kelly.

It has never been about him. It has been about the rule of law. It has been about decency and propriety, about the treatment of him by this government and the political use of him by this Prime Minister.

John Howard can no longer pretend to be Australia’s political father figure. He’s shown himself to be just another politician who can’t be trusted.

We have seen what Howard did to one of the “sons” of his own country. We have seen, by contrast, what a real father does: he fights unconditionally for a son he loves, even when he disagrees with what he did.

When Australians compare John Howard with Terry Hicks they know whom they admire. And whom they despise. They know who is showing them how to be a real human being and a real Australian.

They now see all Howard’s fatuous gravitas for what it has always been – insincere, inauthentic, greedy, compassionless, political posturing. Howard, Australia now knows, is a small man of stunted character, an unethical man, a pretender, pretending that he is not the dork he has been all along.

Meanwhile, the ANU confers on the arrogant, racist despot of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, an honorary Doctorate so as to ingratiate itself with the Singapore government (which means Lee’s nepotistically installed son, effectively Van Nguyen’s executioner) for financial advantage (or, as they put it, “to further the university’s relationship with Singapore”). When such an award can be contemplated, much less approved, by an institution of higher learning and academic independence, Howard’s castration of Australia is almost complete.

Dear DIC

Mar 28, 2007 | Australian Values, Border Security, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Immigration, Legal, Media Values, OzPol Values, USPol, Values, War

Dear DIC

The Ultimate Dreamcometrue

I n the heat of the 2006 Spring Offensive over Australian values Values Australia was born in response to the cynical and ignorant way real Australian values were being abused by politicians and the sycophantic, right-wing media echo chamber.

It was a hard slog but slowly and surely the numbers began to rise and Values Australia was eventually recognised as a Top Five Google site.

And then…the ultimate success! The Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship — freshly cleansed of responsibility for Aborigines and migrants — complained in the most bureaucratically courteous and yet wounded tone about the Values Australia site.

The letter was variously described by others as “bizarre”, a “hoax” and (gloriously) “frog-shit”.

Values Australia had to respond to take advantage of this un-dreamt-of opportunity. (Or, as an Aussie medal-winner might say, “Issa dreamcometrue”.)

Here is an excerpt from the Department’s letter:

“I acknowledge that your website expressly states that it is a satire. However, I am very concerned that it gives the appearance of being an officially approved Australian Government website. I am concerned that some of the content may seriously damage Australia’s reputation overseas. It may also create confusion regarding the important business managed by the Department, including the processing of visa applications and the granting of Australian Citizenship. You have a right to express your views about the government but I consider that the website is potentially misleading and offensive. I request that you remove it immediately….

[…]

I would appreciate your notification within seven days of the date of receipt of this letter that you have taken that action. Otherwise the Department will consider whether to take any further action.”

The claims are addressed comprehensively in the following Values Australia response. We trust you will understand the deletion of the name and address:

Croydon NSW 2132
25 March 2007

Bob Correll
Deputy Secretary
Department of Immigration and Citizenship

Dear Mr Correll,

I have received a letter purporting to have come from your department. There are reasons for believing it may be a hoax and it is therefore attached for your information.

This letter threatens Values Australia with a number of laws and acts including 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

One of the reasons it was thought this letter must be a hoax is that Section 68 of the Crimes Act 1914 was repealed in 2000 whereas the Values Australia website has only been online since September 2006. There may be other laws which are now more pertinent but it is unlikely that a competent government lawyer or the Deputy Secretary of a major government department would make such an embarrassing mistake if they were seriously trying to threaten a citizen.

However, on reflection, and taking into account the numerous far more embarrassing legal gaffes that have been made in recent history by your own department under its variety of names, and the government’s willingness in general to make threats on equally dubious legal grounds against Australian citizens, its willingness to push the legal envelope on refugees, not to mention acts which, according to everyone except government lawyers, contravene international law, and its eager acquiescence in illegal acts by other nations, it has been thought possible that this threat may in fact be genuine.

Section 39(2) of the Trade Marks Act 1995, which you mention (assuming for the moment that it was you and not a hoaxer) refers as far as we can tell to signs which so nearly resemble a sign as to be likely to be taken for it, this in particular reference to the Australian Coat of Arms].

You and your lawyers would have noted as they investigated the Values Australia website that there are a number of images to which you could be referring. There is no one image of which it might be said that “that is the one which is pretending to be the trademark”. Each of these images is merely an image. None of them is a modification in any way of the Australian Coat of Arms and each of them was generated as an original image from materials not remotely connected with the Australian Government.

None of the images is, or has ever been, intended as a trade mark, purports to be a trade mark, or has anywhere been claimed to be a trade mark.

Looking at the images it is clear to anyone remotely acquainted with the Australian Coat of Arms, and anyone who could pass any proposed Australian Citizenship Test, that none of them can be confused with it or could be “taken for it”. According to the official description of the Coat of Arms:

1) A shield is supported by a kangaroo and emu

2) A seven-pointed star sits above the shield

3) A wreath of gold and blue sits under the star

4) Golden wattle frames the shield and supporters

5) A scroll contains the word ‘Australia’.

This is not a description which fits any of the images on the Values Australia website.

a) The bird in every case is on the “wrong” side of the image and is usually a shape resembling an ostrich.

b) Where the bird, in one case only, is an emu it is looking directly at the viewer.

c) The kangaroo’s stance, when it is a stance, is different from that on the “real” Coat of Arms. The difference is variously the disposition of its arms and the direction the head is pointing.

d) In other iterations the kangaroo is reclining.

e) On most images on the site there is no kangaroo. A shape perhaps suggesting a koala is on the right hand side of the image.

f) There is no star, whether seven-pointed or not, on the values Australia image.

g) There is a representation of a crown. There is no crown anywhere on the “real” Coat of Arms.

h) On coloured images there is a rectangle below the crown which is red, blue and yellow.

i) There is no representation of wattle on any image.

j) On coloured images the foliage is clearly eucalyptus.

k) None of the images to which you may be referring have a scroll with the word “Australia”.

l) On images where there is a scroll it says either “Ministry of Mateship” or “Department of Values”.

m) Where there is a shield-shaped element discernible, it does not include any symbol of any of Australia’s six states.

n) Where a shield-shaped element can be discerned on the monotone versions there is no detail.

o) A coloured image bears a shield shape enclosing hands grasping prison bars, or perhaps the bars of a detention centre.

p) There is a distinctly non-Australian sash across the shape.

The third threat made in the letter is with Sections 53 (c) (d) and (eb) of the Trade Practices Act 1974, claiming that a case may be made of “passing off”.

In a landmark passing off case, Reckitt & Colman Ltd v Borden Inc [1990], Lord Oliver stated that a plaintiff must establish all of the following:

a goodwill or reputation attached to the goods or services…

Secondly, he must demonstrate a misrepresentation by the defendant to the public (whether intentional) leading or likely to lead the public to believe that the goods or services offered by him are goods or services of the plaintiff…

Thirdly, he must demonstrate that he suffers [loss or damage as a consequence of the erroneous belief that the goods or services of the defendant are the goods or services of the plaintiff].

a) Values Australia obviously cannot and does not offer or claim to offer the goods and services actually offered by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

b) Not even a stupid person, let alone a “reasonable person”, could conclude that the so-called “services” offered on the Values Australia website would be confused with the real services offered by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship or that there is any intent to represent a limited range of satirical mugs, t-shirts, or “Fair Dinkum Aussie Mate ‘certificates’” – or, indeed, laughter -as being goods or services of, or sanctioned by, the Department.

c) Because the website does not offer, or pretend to offer, or represent that it offers, the actual goods and services offered by the Department, it is as impossible to demonstrate as it is silly to suggest that the Department has suffered or could suffer loss or damage of those services as a result of any confusion caused by the website. No person has ever contacted Values Australia with any question concerning citizenship or visa applications. In case anyone were to try, Values Australia has on the contrary been responsible and careful to avoid confusing really stupid people. The “Contact” page of the website has a link to the Department’s website with the words,

“If you are seeking information about real Australian visas or citizenship, we recommend you go to the official site: http://www.immi.gov.au.”

The header of the website has the statement, “Not an Australian Government site”, which links to the official DIC website.

Returning to the “forgery” threat made in the letter:

The test is intent to deceive, in the case of the repealed act, or of an intention to obtain a gain or cause a loss by inducing a public official to accept a document as genuine. I am confident that there is no public official who would accept the Values Australia website or any of its ‘materials’ as genuine, particularly to the extent of acting upon them. For example, no public official could conceivably accept the Fair Dinkum Aussie Mate Cetrificate as anything but a parody. Values Australia has not and has never had any intention to have any of its materials taken as, or presented by others as, genuine Commonwealth documents, which they quite transparently are not. To suggest otherwise is ludicrous.

The wording on the Fair Dinkum Aussie Mate Certificate includes:

I, the Minister of Fair Dinkum Aussie Values and Detention Centres hereby grant this Certificate of Fair Dinkum Aussie Mateship to the abovenamed applicant who shall be an Aussie Mate, no worries.

The parodied “Visor” stamp contains the following text:

Holder has promised not to blow anything up or molest daughters and has correctly recited “I, Lover”

True blue mate who has promised to sling me a slab

Approved for entry to pick fruit for a period of three months and must then visit Opera House

The following text appears on the home page:

Enriching Australia through the well-managed detention of innocent children

Australian values are to always give people a fair go. This ethic does not apply if your name is David Hicks.

Australia offers a wide range of lifestyle choices – both RSLs and Leagues Clubs.

In principle, we decide who comes here and how they come, but only if that is all right with Indonesia.

Australia values democracy. We love it so much we give it away, at the point of a gun if necessary. Dead Iraqis are a small price to pay for world peace.

Values Australia looks forward to hearing the Department argue that these statements could be misinterpreted or misconstrued as official, credible, or even potential Government policy, or that these statements could possibly be officially approved and that these statements would not immediately indicate to even the most unwary and unsophisticated visitor that the site was a parody, a satire and definitely not a government or government-sanctioned site.

The claims concerning the “title of an official government agency” are the main reason it is thought this letter may be a hoax.

a) The letter was correct in stating that the Values Australia website used the phrase “Department of Citizenship” in the text of one iteration of the header image. However the full text on that image was “Department of Citizenship and Fair Dinkum Values”. The first use of this phrase on the website was on or after 22 September 2006 when your Department’s name was the “Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs”. Your Department was subsequently renamed on or about 23 January 2007 to become the “Department of Immigration and Citizenship”.

b) The letter claims that the use of the phrase “Department of Citizenship” could be misleading and deceptive, but it is clearly not. No reasonable, or even really stupid, person could possibly believe that a department called the “Department of Citizenship and Fair Dinkum Values” would exist in reality.

c) Your Department is not and never was called the “Department of Citizenship”. It is now called the “Department of Immigration and Citizenship”.

d) Astonishingly, the letter claims that the use of the phrase “Department of Citizenship”

“could be seen as a misrepresentation made in the course of trade to perspective customers, which is calculated to injure the business or goodwill of another trader and which causes actual damage, or will probably do so.”

Values Australia fails to see how the use of the phrase “Department of Citizenship and Fair Dinkum Values” three months before the Department’s change of name could be construed either as an intentional “misrepresentation”, or as “calculated to injure”. There was no Department of Citizenship in existence, or planned, which Values Australia could possibly have intended to misrepresent or to injure by using those words. The writer gives Values Australia far too much credit for political clairvoyance to suggest that it could have known three months in advance that the head of the Minister would roll and the Department’s name be changed.

If Values Australia had such predictive abilities it would be in another, far more lucrative, business.

e) On the other hand, perhaps it would not have been such a stretch to foresee that, from DIMIA to DIMA to DIC, first Aborigines and then ethnic Australians would be cleansed from your Department by the Prime Minister.

f) The letter mentions the possibility of “misrepresentation made in the course of trade to perspective customers”.

Values Australia is not clear what a “perspective” customer might be. Perhaps it is one who views the site from a safe distance.

The letter purporting to be from you effects concern that

“some of the content may seriously damage Australia’s reputation overseas.”

The Department does not need Values Australia to damage Australia’s reputation overseas. Your department, in particular, in hand with the Attorney General’s Department and the Department of Foreign Affairs have been “seriously damaging” Australia’s reputation overseas for some years.

Your department’s ministerially admitted and well-documented dysfunctional corporate culture, characterised by callous disregard for humanity, basic morality and decency (all until fairly recently basic Australian values), and the astonishing ineptitude and resultant shameless blameshifting and denial which are so regularly publicly exposed – most recently in your new Minister’s embarrassment over Nauru, IOM and the UNHCR – have resulted all by themselves in immeasurably more damage to Australia’s reputation than the Values Australia website could possibly do if it wanted to, which it most definitely does not.

Australia used to have a reputation overseas as a decent, fair and tolerant country.

Now in just the last few years we have had the Cornelia Rau affair, Vivian Solon, Robert Jovicic, the ongoing humanitarian disgrace of the detention centres and the appalling and un-Australian treatment of refugees.

Values Australia understands that Villawood detainees are released into the Australian community, after four years in detention, not knowing a word of English. Not to help these people to learn English, when there has been so much opportunity over four years, is a disgrace and to require them to enter the community without the basic tools they need in order to survive is simply abuse.

Then there is David Hicks and Guantánamo, Australia’s capitulation to Indonesia over refugees from Irian Jaya and of course AWB. Naturally, Values Australia understands that the fury at Australia expressed by the United Nations, The US Congress and Canada over the AWB Affair pales into insignificance beside the light humour attempted on the Values Australia website.

The letter you may have written says,

“You have a right to express your views about the government but I consider that the website is potentially misleading and offensive.”

Values Australia is not sure it understands. Does this mean that Australian citizens may express their views so long as they are not offensive? It does not say offensive to whom. The Department’s website asserts that Australians are free to express their opinions about any topic. That Australia does not censor the media. That a person may criticise the government without fear of arrest. Is this only as long as they are not offensive? Is it offensive by definition to criticise the government? Values Australia is not aware of which law would cover that.

Values Australia, although it makes fun of elements of Australian culture and politics, is fiercely and proudly Australian, defending the real Australian values of decency and humanity and a fair go, from the constant, corrosive attacks by cynical, self-serving politicians and bureaucrats.

Values Australia sees what it does as positively enhancing Australia’s international reputation, as it knows for a fact that it does, by demonstrating that despite our politicians and their compliant servants, most real Australians are humane; that Australians do care about people elsewhere in the world; that Australians do disagree with the callousness of this government and its servants, and that Australians do have a sense of humour.

Bob, a person reported to Values Australia a conversation with his children when they had read some pages of the Values Australia website. “Are they allowed to say that?” they asked. “Won’t they get into trouble?”

This person was furious and said so. “How dare you!” he exploded. “Don’t you understand? You have free speech in this country. You are allowed to say what you think! People fought wars and died for that freedom! How dare you assume that you don’t have freedom of speech!”

Of course their belief that they couldn’t necessarily say what they thought if it was critical of the government was natural. In their short lives they had already seen so many of the liberties, rights and freedoms that had been fought for and cherished in Australia for so long being eroded and corroded under this government, and apparently and unfortunately with the acquiescence of people like you.

So Bob (assuming you wrote the letter), what is another little freedom quietly whittled away, another voice strangled, another turn of the screw of fear on an increasingly, and synthetically, anxious population? It’s not really you, after all. It’s the job, it’s the kids’ education, it’s the career, it’s the boss, it’s the Minister, it’s the PM. It’s not you, not really. At the end of the week you can still hop in the Volvo and tootle down to the weekender at Moruya to bask in the knowledge of a week well worked. It’s just people, after all.

Values Australia will of course be assuming for the time being that the letter is real and taking legal advice on all of the points, but it declines to refrain from giving offence – if that is what is taken – for the sake merely of “not being offensive”. That would be a violation of a basic Australian value.

Graham (family name withheld)

for Values Australia

Values Australia is not a lawyer and would be grateful for any serious pro bono advice on the matter.

Some Responses to “Dear ‘DIC’ ”

Club Troppo » Missing Link:

29 March, 2007 at 7:19 am

[…] The usual superbly diverse collection of blogospherical delights are summarised below under the usual headings. But I thought I would highlight here in the intro a post which is my early favourite for Blog Post of the Year 2007. It’s 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 by the bastardry of the recently renamed federal Department of Immigration and Citizenship (”DIC”) and produces a devastating response to a threatening letter from the Department’s lawyers. Do yourself a favour and read it in full. For what it’s worth, my briefly considered generalist lawyer’s evaluation of the threats is that they have no legal substance whatever. This appalling example of government bullying and attempted suppression of political free speech should by rights become a significant story in the mainstream media if the Department continues pursuing “Roger”. […]

Barista » Blog Archive »:

30 March, 2007 at 7:46 am

[…] The site has a wonderful time taking the piss out of this letter, demonstrating just how ludicrous the claim is. I just wanted to compare the coats of arms which the Department considers to be so similar: […]

Lang Mack:

30 March, 2007 at 8:06 am

Thank you so much for the effort you put in,I have been dealing with these “people” on behalf of another four five years and have had to play it straight to get a result, that made me so happy, I wish you well.. Thanks again..

al loomis:

31 March, 2007 at 11:38 pm

was it really ‘dic’? are they that stupid? your fortune is made! unless it’s a scam in which case the the scammers get the coup feather, and you are caught taking yourself so very seriously. amusing, whichever.