Only Thus?

Jan 13, 2009 | Cultural Values, Democracy, Racism, Religious Values, Terrorism, Values, War

Only Thus?

 

Let’s get one or two things clear:

  1. We are not against Jewish people in general.
  2. We are opposed to the actions of some individuals in particular.
  3. We are not opposed to their religion in particular.
  4. We are opposed to all religious belief (except, of course, the Flying Spaghetti Monster) in general, all religious practice and especially all religious coercion.
  5. We are not opposed to the State of Israel.
  6. We are opposed to some Israeli politicians, apparatchiks and apologists, their actions and their dishonesty.
  7. We are not pro-Hamas or pro-Palestinian
  8. …except in the sense that we are pro-humanity and pro-human beings.
  9. We are opposed to the killing and harming and exploitation of human beings by any person or any group in the pursuit of political agendas.

So that said…

There is an Israeli election coming up. Tzipi Livni is up against Netanyahu.

Also, George Bush, well-known for being the easy pushover for American Zionists, is about to be stop being President.

Livni has had one last window of opportunity. And, coincidentally enough, she is now claiming that the “Gaza job” is almost complete. Just in time to be over for Obama’s inauguration.

So who is Tzipi Livni? [Most of this from Wikipedia]

Tzipi Livni is a child of the Jewish struggle for a homeland, the daughter of Eitan Livni (born in Poland) and Sara Rosenberg, both prominent former Irgun members.

Irgun was a militant Zionist group that operated in Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was established as a militant offshoot of the earlier and larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah.

The Irgun was the armed expression of the nascent ideology of Revisionist Zionism founded by Ze’ev Jabotinsky. He expressed this ideology as

“every Jew had the right to enter Palestine; only active retaliation would deter the Arabs and the British; only Jewish armed force would ensure the Jewish state”.

Some of the better-known attacks by Irgun were the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 22 July 1946 [killing 92 people] and the Deir Yassin massacre (accomplished together with the Stern Gang) on 9 April 1948.

In the West, Irgun was described as a terrorist organization by The New York Times newspaper, The Times of London, the British Broadcasting Corporation, the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry, and prominent world and Jewish figures, such as Winston Churchill, Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein, and many others.

Irgun attacks prompted a formal declaration from the World Zionist Congress in 1946, which strongly condemned “the shedding of innocent blood as a means of political warfare”.

Irgun was a political predecessor to Israel’s right-wing Herut (or “Freedom”) party, which led to today’s Likud party. [And Kadima, Livni’s party, is a splinter from Likud.]

“ The symbol of the Irgun, with the motto “Only Thus” alongside a hand holding a rifle in the foreground of all of mandatory Palestine (both sides of the Jordan River), symbolized the striving for Hebrew independence over the entire land of Israel, to be achieved only by the power of Hebrew weapons.

In 1948, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt and other prominent American Jews signed a Godwin’s-Law-compliant letter that began:

“ Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the “Freedom Party” (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.

Soon after World War II, Winston Churchill said “we should never have stopped immigration before the war”, but that the Irgun were “the vilest gangsters” and that he would “never forgive the Irgun terrorists.”

Are we drawing too long a bow, or is the spirit of Irgun alive in Israel today?

The Times:

“ British anger at terror celebration

July 20, 2006

The commemoration of Israeli bombings that killed 92 people has caused offence.

The rightwingers, including Binyamin Netanyahu, the former Prime Minister, are commemorating the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the headquarters of British rule, that killed 92 people and helped to drive the British from Palestine.

In 2006, Simon McDonald, the British Ambassador in Tel Aviv at the time, and John Jenkins, the Consul-General in Jerusalem at the time, wrote in response to a pro-Irgun commemoration of the King David Hotel bombing:

“ We do not think that it is right for an act of terrorism, which led to the loss of many lives, to be commemorated.”

They also called for the removal of plaques at the site which blame the deaths on “ignored warning calls.” The plaques read:

“ For reasons known only to the British, the hotel was not evacuated,”

but McDonald and Jenkins asserted that no such warning calls were made, adding that even if they had,

“ this does not absolve those who planted the bomb from responsibility for the deaths.”

It is hard to think that Livni’s politics are not deeply influenced by her family’s past and by the history, politics and culture of Irgun. There are scarily striking echoes here. To Livni and the Israelis, Palestinians who act militarily for what they believe are their rights are “terrorists” who, along with their children and families, need to be shot, bombed and killed. Israelis, in stark contrast, are “freedom fighters” whose deeds deserve commemoration.

Livni this week blamed the Palestinians for their own deaths, for the very same reason that her political forbears blamed the Brtitish for their deaths at the King David Hotel 62 years ago: the Palestinians had been phoned to warn them that their homes were about to be bombed. It was up to them to evacuate. Ah, yes. The good old game of “blame the victim”.

How would Israelis react if people said of the Holocaust, “Well, you know, you have only yourselves to blame. If you weren’t jewish….” Of course they’d be outraged, and rightly.

“ A military spokeswoman, Maj. Avital Leibovich, said Monday that the army had “no intention of harming civilians.”

The height of the disingenuousness of the Israelis comes in saying they don’t “intend” to kill civilians, while knowing that they certainly will, and proposing that, since they didn’t ‘intend’ the inevitable casualties they will certainly cause, they are not therefore accountable for them. In fact they go further and sheet the responsibility home to Hamas. Or accident. In this way, of course, they kill and maim any number of innocents without, supposedly, troubling their conscience at all. The Israelis seem to be proposing that ‘lack of intention’ is exculpatory. It is not.

Whether they ‘intend’ the deaths of innocent civilians or not, the Israelis are responsible for them and accountable for them. Their squirming avoidance of responsibility and their refusal to admit blindingly obvious agency is the real awfulness in the matter and the true indication of the national character flaw. Not to mention their retreat behind the magic mirror of the past — you know, the one that makes everyone who looks into it turn into an anti-semite at the slightest suggestion of criticism of their ruthless, immoral, bloodthirsty 21st century politicians.

The awfulness doesn’t stop there. Israeli spokesperson, sleazy — and unfortunately and shamefully Australian — Mark Regev, said wtteo “we are sorry a UN truckdriver was killed. We don’t know if Hamas was operating in that area on that day and the UN trucks got accidentally caught in the crossfire, but it is terrible that they were”, sliding from barely plausible scenario to probable fact in the course of a single sentence.

All the people who have acted to shed blood, or failed to act to stop it – Israelis, Hamas, Bush, Tony The Fixer Blair, the UN – must be called to account for the consequences of their actions and inaction, particularly given their sleazy attempts to avoid accountability.

The greatest lie may have been that told by Condolleeza Rice, that a ceasefire was desirable but that it must be sustainable and must include disarming Hamas.

No! That is not what was required.

What was required was for Israel to stop killing people.

That’s all.

Stop killing innocent people, children, babies, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers. The rest can be worked out later. It’s like someone saying, “The Indians are attacking, they’re firing arrows at us. Quick, find some wood and nail it across the windows,” and you say, “No, no, if you’re going to alter the appearance of the windows first we need to discuss colour, and call in the interior decorator to make sure it’s done nice. And I want frilly curtains.”

Just stop killing each other. That is not difficult. At all.

The stupidity of the Israeli action in Gaza is that it is blindingly obvious that it ensures that hostility towards Israel and Israeli citizens is perpetuated and increased and not just amongst Palestinians.

Anti-Israeli feeling is growing globally. People are impatient with Israel’s politicians. They are over its immature tantrums, its childish emotions and bullying excesses.

The Israelis have lost much of the grassroots international support they had and it is going to be increasingly difficult in the future for liberal-democratic regimes around the world, – or even America – to carry their populations with a pro-Israeli stance.

But surely that is not what Israelis want – permanently to play the role of self-inflicted victimhood.

If the Israelis should listen to anyone, I plead with them, listen to the great souls amongst you, past and present.

Listen to Daniel Barenboim. Watch what he does; see how he reconciles Israeli and Palestinian. Hear what he says and listen to the music he makes with his Israeli/Palestinian, West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.

 

 

UPDATE:

Oops! Wonder what Regev (née Freiberg) will say about the Israeli shelling of the UN compound in Gaza. How will he blame Hamas for this one? Will it be another case of crossfire or did the gunner swallow a muslim-sympathising fly just as he was pressing the button?

Israeli Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, said it was a “grave mistake” and he took it “very seriously”. He assured Ban Ki-Moon that “extra attention” will be paid to U.N. facilities and staff and this will not be repeated.”

Unfortunately the Israeli track record is not good on the “never again” scale. They killed the UN truckdriver just the other day, and during their glorious fight against Lebanon recently, remember they shelled a UN observation post killing at least two UN officials.

“Oops, sorry, I’ll try not to do it again,” isn’t really good enough, is it.

‘I’m Sir Roger and I’m Fucked’

Oct 5, 2008 | Arts, Australian Values, Border Security, Capital Punishment, Citizenship, Corruption, Cultural Values, Democracy, Economic Values, Fame, Freedom of Speech, Global Warming, Humour, Immigration, Indigenous, Legal, Lifestyle & Life, Media Values, OzPol Values, PedoPriests, Racism, Religious Values, Science Values, Terrorism, Uncategorized, USPol, Values, War

‘I’m Sir Roger and I’m Fucked’

 

This is not for you

 

Really. We just want to acknowledge ourselves privately but publicly (it makes sense to us, anyway). It’s not meant to be onanistically self-congratulatory, except in the sense that we have achieved some things and we want to record them.
So this is a stocktake for posterity, if you like, that marks a moment, a milestone.

Yes, ValuesAustralia is two years old. This is our 712th post. Singlehanded, eh, Clubtroppo, Larvatus Prodeo, RoadtoSurfdom etc. etc.? That’s almost one a day. (There used to be a billboard for One A Day vitamin pills at the corner of Victoria Rd and Rowntree Street at Blackwattle Bay in Sydney. There was a picture of a man and a woman. The woman was saying, “I’m Jenny and I give John One A Day.” Soon a graffiti artist had added, “I’m John and I’m fucked!”)

And, yes, we’re just about fucked, ourselves. We’ve got a rotator cuff from all the typing and mouse clicking, especially during October and November last year.

(We went to the radiologist. “What seems to be the problem?” “I’ve got a sore shoulder.” “Hmm…we’ll do an ultrasound and an x-ray…… Hmm…. Hmmmmmm, our expert analysis of the ultrasound and x-ray indicates you have a sore shoulder. You’ll have to stop using it for a while.” “Thanks….What?)

We’ve never paid for any advertising. We’ve never submitted ValuesAustralia to any search engine. Nevertheless, we got ourselves listed on Google within 24 hours of launching the site. We tried to register the site with dmoz.org (The Open Source Directory) – as you do – but it wasn’t taking orders, and by the time it came back on line months later, ValuesAustralia was already magically listed!

We’ve been #1 for “Australian Values” on Google, Yahoo, Live and Ask most of the time for more than a year and a half. We’re #12 for “values” on Google worldwide, out of 314,000,000 results and on google.com.au we’re #2 for “values” out of 307,000,000. We’re #1 on google worldwide and Australia for “Australian political values” out of about 400,000 results.

Our Google Page Rank is 4 (used to be 5 but they changed the algorithm) which is respectable but we’d prefer a 5 or a 6.

We’ve had over 300,000 aggregate visitors and more than 75,000 spam messages (thank you, Akismet).

Earlier this year we were consistently getting more than 1000 visitors a day – over 30,000 a month, which is okay, although nothing like the big guys.

We’ve made friends all over the world and especially in Australia. We are in the top 1% of websites worldwide. We are popular in Saudi Arabia – amongst the top 42,000 favourite sites for Saudis. (That worries us just a bit…Say hullo to Al for us…) We appreciate our readers and those who choose to comment from time to time. We thought a scarcity of comments was a Bad Thing, a Failure, but we noticed that one of the most popular, most entertaining bloggers we know of, Whatever It Is, I’m Against It, doesn’t get heaps, either – a few, but not tens like Possum or hundreds and thousands like William the PollBludger.

In May 2007 ValuesAustralia was picked up by the “Stay In Touch” column at the Sydney Morning Herald, accusing us of “rhetoric”.

One of Sir Roger’s posts was selected by ClubTroppo and On Line Opinion in January 2008 as one of the top 40 posts in Australia for 2007. We’re very proud of that.

But it’s a post we made early in 2007 that we are still most proud of. Ken Parish at ClubTroppo 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… ”

Yes, Troppo has been good to us and we mourn the passing of Missing Link and Ken’s prolonged work-induced(?) absence. We were also congratulated by Richard Neville (HomePageDaily) and Steven Poole whose Unspeak blog is our benchmark for economy, clarity, style and wit.

We have enjoyed the journey so far and we have no intention at this stage of stopping, although we have slowed down (work, you know).

Bobbo the Clown

Our favourite person in the world, of course, is the clown, Bob Correll (above), Deputy Secretary of DIC, OPM, because he wrote us the letter which inspired our outburst. As we discovered he was (and appears still to be) the person who had taken over departmental responsibility for “Borders, Compliance, Detention and Technology”, or in other words, perhaps, for keeping innocent kiddies locked up in the desert, deporting Australian citizens, supporting the failed state of Nauru, making the lives of genuine refugees a misery, doing it to please the Minister, and all at the touch of a computer key. Previously he had been the driving force behind developing and implementing Job Network, or “how to design exquisite, personalised punishment for people who are already struggling with the stress of being unemployed”. Godluvvya, Bob! How’s the Volvo? How’s the kids? How do you sleep at night?

One of the most satisfying things is how we always beat the Immigration Department on Google.

Our second favourite person is Mick Keelty, just for being such a hopeless buffoon and continually making appalling stuff-ups for us to make fun of. G’bye, Mick.

Anyway, just for the record.

(And a special “hi!” to Lang!)

Sunday Roast

Aug 17, 2008 | Australian Values, Cultural Values, Lifestyle & Life, Religious Values, Values

Sunday Roast

Godly Thoughts for Sunday

“ 

And now, today, we grieve for four young men [US Marines murdered in El Salvador] taken from us too soon. And we receive them in death as they were on the last night of their lives, together and following a radiant light — following it toward heaven, toward home. And if we reach — or when we reach — heaven’s scenes, we truly will find it guarded by…

…wait for it…

…we truly will find it guarded by United States marines.
– [President Ronald Reagan, June 22, 1985]

So that’s something to look forward to.

“ I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do.

When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”
– [Stephen Roberts]

 

“ I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian God may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.”

– [Bertrand Russell]

 

“ We have just enough religion to make us hate but not enough religion to make us love one another”
– [Jonathan Swift]

 

“ When I think of all the harm the Bible has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.”

– [Oscar Wilde]

Oh, no, you bloody don’t!

Jun 11, 2008 | Australian Values, Democracy, Media Values, Religious Values, Terrorism, USPol, Values, War

Oh, no, you bloody don’t!

I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood

“ President Bush has admitted to The Times that his gun-slinging rhetoric made the world believe that he was a “guy really anxious for war” in Iraq.
In an exclusive interview, he expressed regret at the bitter divisions over the war and said that he was troubled about how his country had been misunderstood. “I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric.”

As we picked our chin off the floor we thought, “What an utterly lame and sleazy attempt this really is to rewrite history in the name of clawing back some sort of presidential legacy from the catastrophic horrors he has inflicted on the world and even on his own people through his proud ignorance and astonishing immaturity.”

Actually, we didn’t think that. We don’t talk to ourself like that. I mean, you don’t, do you. It was more like “What the fucking fuck?!” But it’s what we meant.

As SFGate‘s Edward M. Gomez, a former U.S. diplomat and staff reporter at TIME, put it, “Now he tells us.”

“ Phrases such as “bring them on” or “dead or alive”, he said, “indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace”.
He said that he found it very painful “to put youngsters in harm’s way”.
He added: “I try to meet with as many of the families as I can. And I have an obligation to comfort and console as best as I possibly can. I also have an obligation to make sure that those lives were not lost in vain.”

Well, Mr Bush, (pardon us) FUCK YOU!

It wasn’t your rhetoric that showed you were a “guy really anxious for war”.

It was how you were, ah, really anxious for war.

It was how you rushed in.

It was how you deliberately ignored, manufactured and distorted intelligence.

It was how you had quite a few people killed. Over a million on the high but credible side and, certainly, considerably over 100,000 on the very most conservative realistic estimates. All innocent. Largely mothers and children.

People don’t think you are not a man of peace because of something you said, Mr Bush. People know you are not a man of peace because you started a war and killed a lot of people.

People know you are not a man of peace because you started a war on your very own, on the flimsiest and most transparent of excuses and against international laws and conventions, against a country that had not attacked yours and could not. As you and all those around you knew.

You will not get away with this slimy, slippery, dishonest, hollow, inauthentic, typically infantile attempt to avoid responsibility for the global horrors you have created with your own hands; horrors which include the devastated lives of the mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts and uncles of the more than 4,000 soldiers whose lives were wiped out because you were anxious for war; horrors that include the destroyed futures and minds of the tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraq veterans who are physical and mental casualties of your headlong and bloodthirsty rush into a synthetic conflict, and that include the families of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died, and the more than two million Iraqis who have been forced to flee Iraq or who are internally displaced.

And the release and explosion of sectarian violence in Iraq which was caused by your stupidity and your lust for war.

So please don’t ask for forgiveness.

Don’t claim to have been misunderstood.

The rest of the world will not let you get away with it. Surely your own countrymen will not, either.

You claim to be troubled about how your country has been misunderstood.

Mr Bush, your country is not misunderstood. Not really. The world knows that many Americans are confused about how all this happened, how the country attracts so much hatred.

But we can tell them that it’s not them, it’s you.

The world knows that your country includes warmongers like yourself, anti-democratic ideologues whom you support, ignorant stupid people like yourself, religious nuts who think god talks to them and tells them what they ought to do – and some even worse than yourself.

And yet the world also knows that your country still nurtures a people who are extraordinarily generous.

The world knows that, despite your efforts to silence and sideline them, your country still is home to more than its fair share of the most humane souls, the greatest, wisest minds, the most creative thinkers and talented doers, and some of the most energetic, enterprising, adventurous, life-loving and courageous people on the planet.

You are not one of them.

Expertology

May 5, 2008 | Australian Values, Democracy, Humour, Media Values, OzPol Values, Religious Values, USPol, Values, War

Expertology

 

How the Experts Won the Iraq War in Weeks Rather Than Years

 

The newest Bill Moyers Journal episode includes an interview with Victor Navasky and Christopher Cerf, whose new book MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! OR HOW WE WON THE WAR IN IRAQ looks back at what the experts told us would happen in Iraq. It’s quite funny except it’s all true.
You can watch it here:

 

What the experts said:

DONALD RUMSFELD:
“It could last, you know, six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.”
CHENEY:
”I think it’ll go relatively quickly…weeks rather than months.”
PAUL WOLFOWITZ:
“We can say with reasonable confidence that the notion of hundreds of thousands of American troops is way off the mark…We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.

WILLIAM KRISTOL: “The first two battles of this new era are now over. The battles of Afghanistan and Iraq have been won decisively and honorably.”

RICHARD PERLE:  The war, “…ended quickly with few civilian casualties and with little damage to Iraq’s cities, towns or infrastructure…it ended… without the quagmire [the war’s critics] predicted…relax and enjoy it.”
MONA CHARON: “the man who slept through many classes at Yale and partied the nights away stands revealed as a profound and great leader who will reshape the world for the better. The United States is lucky once again.”
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: “The only people who think this wasn’t a victory are Upper West Side liberals and a few people here in Washington.”
WILLIAM KRISTOL:”I think there’s been a certain amount of frankly.. pop sociology in America…that…the Shia can’t get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There’s almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq’s always been very secular.”

Here’s an excerpt from the interview with Navasky and Cerf:

VICTOR NAVASKY: Well, at every stage, there was someone who proclaimed that it was over. And– when this book came out, we were told isn’t it a shame that it’s coming out now, because the country has reached a turning point with the surge. And based on our research at the Institute of Expertology … we were sympathetic to the point of view that we’ve reached a turning point. Because, as we show in the book, in 2003, we were told by the President of the United States that we’ve reached a turning point. And then, in 2004, we were told we had reached a turning point.
And then, in 2005, we were told by Donald Rumsfeld we have reached a turning point. And then– So every year, three or four times, we seem to have reached a turning point. So that’s one of the ways that we have triumphed.

 

BILL MOYERS: So how do you decide who is an expert? What makes an expert?

 

CHRISTOPHER CERF: Well, I think if you are in the government – this is one of the problems we have in the country – you are, by definition, an expert. In fact, you’re unpatriotic if you disagree with someone in the government. And your expertise, if you had any before, becomes suspect.

 

BILL MOYERS: But these experts also included scholars, pundits, columnists.

 

VICTOR NAVASKY: People are believed to be experts who proclaim their expertise. Some of them do it directly. Others do it by using jargon, by parading the number of articles they’ve published, by their titles, and by their uniforms. And then, people who have positions of status and power, whether in the press, who are supposed to be adversaries of the establishment. Or, you know, the heads of departments – great departments of government – are assumed to know what they’re talking about. So anyone who is presumed to know what he is talking about, we, at the Institute of Expertology are ready to say, as an expert, but you have to trust us – they don’t.

But who are their favourite “experts”?

VICTOR NAVASKY: I have a favorite expert and a friend. And Chris, I’m sure, has his. But my favorite quote – he’s my favorite expert. But it’s a quote by Paul Wolfowitz, who, you know, came from the academic community, and then had this very important career in the Defense Department, et cetera.
And he says, at one point, “I think foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq.”

Not a Civil Society Just Yet

Apr 13, 2008 | Australian Values, Border Security, Citizenship, Corruption, Cultural Values, Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Immigration, Legal, Media Values, OzPol Values, Racism, Religious Values, Terrorism, Values

Not a Civil Society Just Yet

 

 

We have a new hero at Values Australia (no, not Manning Clark).
His name is Julian Burnside QC. Not that we didn’t respect him before and agree with him and all like that. But, well…see it’s like this:

We got an mp3 player, for the train or whatever, and to fill it up we scoured ABC Radio National for podcasts.

Science Show, All in the Mind, Philosopher’s Zone, By Design, Ockham’s Razor.

You know the stuff. And of course there’s Big Ideas.

So we downloaded a likely lump about a Manning Clark Lecture:

“Citizens’ rights and the rule of law in a civil society: not just yet”.

It was by Julian Burnside, on the 10th of March this year.

Thought it might be a bit dry but we were so wrong about that!.

We were astonished.

He covers everything we had been trying to say but with such authority and knowledge. So we recommend you have a listen, too.

In his lecture he covered the Sorry statement and the appalling case of an aboriginal man called Bruce Trevorrow.

In the end we were far more inclined to agree with Burnside that some sort of compensation for the stolen generations is appropriate, rather than just the more nebulous idea of an improvement of aborigines’ lot, generally, over time.

“ In the first sitting of the new parliament, the Government said ‘sorry’ to the stolen generations. It seemed almost too good to be true: the apology so many had waited so long to hear. And it was astonishing and uplifting to hear some of the noblest and most dignified sentiments ever uttered in that place on the hill.
[ … ]
The apology was significant not only for marking a significant step in the process of reconciling ourselves with our past: it cast a new light on the former government. It set a new tone. And I think it reminded us of something we had lost: a sense of decency.

 

Most of the worst aspects of the Howard years can be explained by the lack of decency which infected their approach to government:

 

they could not acknowledge the wrong that was done to the stolen generations;

 

they failed to help David Hicks when it was a moral imperative – they waited until his rescue became a political imperative;

they never quite understood the wickedness of imprisoning children who were fleeing persecution;

they abandoned ministerial responsibility;

they attacked the courts scandalously but unblushing;

they argued for the right to detain innocent people for life;

they introduced laws which prevent fair trials;

they bribed the impoverished Republic of Nauru to warehouse refugees for us.

It seemed that they did not understand just how badly they were behaving, or perhaps they just did not care.

He also spoke about the rule of law, incommunicado detention, control orders and preventative detention, the right of the State (and its secret agencies) to withhold evidence, civil rights, erosion of rights, a Bill of Rights and more.

His lecture went further than the ABC podcast includes. Nevertheless the podcast is excellent.

Here’s a transcript of part of his speech which is on the podcast:

“ In 2005 further anti-terror legislation was introduced. The Commonwealth Criminal Code was amended to provide that a member of the Federal Police may apply for a preventative detention order in relation to a person. A preventative detention order will result in a person being jailed for up to 14 days in circumstances where they have not been charged with, much less convicted of, any offence. The order is obtained in the absence of the person concerned, and authorises that the person be taken into custody. When the person is taken into custody, they must not be told the evidence on which the order was obtained.

Thus, a preventative detention order can be made not only without a trial of any sort, but in circumstances where the subject of the order will not be allowed to know the evidence which was used to secure the order, even after the event.

We believe that few Australians are aware of just how far John Howard and his morally-neutered hired guns like Ruddock, Andrews, Vanstone and Mick Keelty went, in the name of “security” to tear down their legal rights and liberties.

Australians generally, we think, are unclear how little of what they believe they have they really have left. Perhaps, as Burnside suggests, they don’t want to know, as long as they’re doing all right and it’s not affecting them. But of course it does affect them and it will.

Habeas corpus is dead and stinking not only in the US but now here in Australia as well. Dwight D. Eisenhower must be rolling in his grave over what John Yoo and Alberto Gonzalez, with Dick Cheney and George Bush and the supine American Senate, did to habeas corpus in the US:

Here are Ike’s Remarks Upon Receiving the America’s Democratic Legacy Award at B’nai B’rith:

“ Why are we proud?

We are proud, first of all, because from the beginning of this Nation, a man can walk upright, no matter who he is, or who she is. He can walk upright and meet his friend – or his enemy; and he does not fear that because that enemy may be in a position of great power that he can be suddenly thrown in jail to rot there without charges and with no recourse to justice. We have the habeas corpus Act, and we respect it.”

With this lecture Julian Burnside — for standing up and saying what is so — has for us moved from “respected” to “hero”.

Here is the recording  of Burnside’s Manning Clark Lecture from ABC’s Big Ideas:

Not Just Yet

by Julian Burnside QC