Monday, October 31, 2005

Halloween meditations:

A series of devastating cyclones convinces the leading elite that there may be something in climate change afterall.

What will it take to convince the same leaderships that there may be something in resolving conflict without war? Please don't tell me it has to be nuclear.

What will it take to convince the same leaderships that there may be something in unfettered communication rather then shutting down modes of free expression with "anti-terror laws". Please don't tell me we need suffer another social experiment.

What will it take to convince young impatient renegades that ordinary people can effect change without resorting to holocaustic extremes.

And what would a fabian do with only two minutes before midnight.

Friday, October 28, 2005

Plagiarism, NO

Am without shame copying and pasting this whole story here. Because when Australia's new "anti-terror" laws go through (next tuesday, 1 November 2005, Melbourne Cup day) this story will be "illegal". Ie, journalists would be breaking the law for publishing about what happened and is happening to Bilal Daye and his family. If that isn't censorship what is.

I'm in a rush so here it all is, copied and pasted in case after the new laws get passed the Herald has to pull the article off its site:

Read all about it - soon it will be a crime

By Tom Allard
October 28, 2005

Bilal Daye and ASIO director-general Paul O'Sullivan have got at least one thing in common - they both went to school at Randwick's Marcellin college.

But for that footnote in their CVs, there is little to compare the two men. One is the head of Australia's domestic spy agency, the other was raided twice by federal authorities, suspected of being a terrorist. On Tuesday, Mr Daye will take Mr O'Sullivan and the Commonwealth Government to the District Court, seeking damages of up to $750,000 for a bungled swoop by ASIO agents and heavily armed police on his Mascot home.

It is a story that anyone interested in the subject should read now. Under the proposed anti-terrorism laws, stories like Mr Daye's could not be told.

For Mr Daye, it is an opportunity to seek redress for an incident that he says badly traumatised himself, his family and sullied his reputation in the community. It is also a cautionary tale about how intelligence on terrorism suspects can be wrong, and how security authorities can make the most elementary mistakes.

By coincidence, the case will be heard on the day the Federal Government had slated to introduce legislation for new anti-terrorism measures, including control orders and preventive detention based only on intelligence, as well as the secrecy provisions which could ban such stories being reported.

Mr Daye's home was raided weeks after the September 11 attack of 2001 while he was in bed with his wife, Fatma, who had arrived in Australia from Lebanon only four days earlier.

As he scrambled to get dressed, Mr Daye heard agents demand he open his bedroom door or "we're going to blow it off", according to his statement of claim. When he came out, there were guns pointed at his head. He was told to join other family members in the living room, kneel down and turn around.

His wife was refused permission to get dressed in the modest fashion that is the tradition for Muslim women in the presence of strangers, Mr Daye claims. "I thought it was a joke at first," he told the Herald. "I thought it was a dream. It couldn't be real. It turned out is was real and a nightmare."

As family members cowered and complained, an ASIO "technical team" began to film the premises and take photographs.

According to an account by the then Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, Bill Blick, the senior ASIO officer then realised he had made a "serious" error. He had the wrong address on the search and seizure warrant. That should have been patently obvious because ASIO and police had earlier gone to the actual address on the warrant - Mr Daye's father's grocery shop - about 100 metres down the road.

Mr Daye says the ordeal took an hour. ASIO says it was less than 10 minutes. It will be difficult for the court to determine - ASIO immediately destroyed the only evidence, the video and photos, when the officer in charge realised the raid was unlawful. Two months later, Australian Federal Police officers returned with a proper warrant and "spent six hours going through the whole house from front to end", Mr Daye said. His wife claims the stress of this second raid prompted a miscarriage.

Four years after the raids, Mr Daye has no idea exactly what he was supposed to have done wrong, although he believes authorities had fingered him as a terrorist "sleeper".

Born in Australia, he strictly observes Islam and visited Pakistan a year or so before the raids, a month-long stopover on his way back from making the Haj, or pilgrimage to Islam's holiest sites in Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. "I went to mosques, I went to a few restaurants. I got sick there on the curries. I threw up a lot and I couldn't wait to get back home."

He denies emphatically that he attended a terrorist training camp.

ASIO declined to comment yesterday, as did the AFP.

ASIO returned Mr Daye's passport to him more than two years ago, a sign that its intelligence was off-beam. It is understood ASIO has already offered compensation to Mr Daye, although it clearly hasn't satisfied him or his lawyer, Stephen Hopper. Mr Hopper says the saga could have been a lot worse had it occurred under the proposed anti-terrorism laws.

"He could have been taken away and detained for a couple of weeks and no-one could have told his wife and family what was going on. Or he could be put under indefinite house arrest even though the intelligence that put him there can't be tested or challenged … an innocent man caught up in innuendo, suspicion and hearsay. Nothing more."

Moreover, journalists would have been unable to report it.


Arrest me.

Update:
the terror laws have been delayed by last minute palladiation, the complete package deal is supposed to be through by Christmas, at this point. Merry x-mas to me. Talk about grinch.

Monday, October 24, 2005

Flu

Perhaps adversity suits me. I mean, I feel fantastic. No joke. My eyes are half sunken into my head and my nose would be running onto the space bar if I didn't have a wad of tissues in my lap to catch the drips - but I feel excellent. What a way to spend the day.

If I had a fever I might wonder if I were delirious.

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Arrest me update

No idea what I would think of this man in real life, but his press statements are making him my favourite imam. He's offering himself up for arrest as well.

I'll take rap: Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly

The prominent imam Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly has urged the Federal Government to scrap its proposed terrorism laws, saying he will personally guarantee there are no terrorist attacks here and happily go to jail if he is wrong...


He says:

"We have people in Australia who hold views that are extreme or radical. Just because they have extreme thoughts doesn't mean they will put them into action.

"And putting them in jail when they are innocent will breed hatred. That's why these laws are dangerous for Australia and Australian society."


Exactly.

And his pledge:

"My view is that there are no terrorists but there are extremists. If any act of terrorism does occur, I will be responsible and I'm ready to go to jail." more


Me too.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

NZ update moan

Crap. Peters got the foreign minister's portfolio. He's a neocon. The only thing worse would have been Don Brash with it.

Prime Minister Helen Clark has retained power in New Zealand with a deal clinched by making outspoken, anti-migrant populist Winston Peters her new foreign minister.

Clark today announced the formation of a new centrist government, one month after voters gave her Labour Party the most seats in parliament, but 11 short of a majority. more

Saturday, October 01, 2005

A very short story with no real point, perhaps about excess

Today I am reminded of excess. And about the story about a boy who never brushed his teeth and ended up with a mouth full of fillings. After vowing never to endure another filling the boy became fanatical and brushed his teeth so often that he brushed off all the enamel. I would like at this point to make an outrageous claim; by the (tender) age of seven the entire top row of the boy's teeth were crowned, to protect them.

But this is a true story and that would be a false claim. In real life, the school dental nurse consoled the boy's worried mother; they were only his milk teeth and the second set were still to come through.

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