Australia: Terrorism or Totalitarianism?

CAPITALIST RULE AUSSIES CONDEMNED BY DECADES of FVEY coterie CAPITALIST PROGRAM OF POPULATION TRANSFER aimed at:  DISMANTLING OF ANGO-AUSTRALIA in step with agenda of ruling US-ANGLO CAPITALIST EMPIRE CONDEMNED TO ENDURE 1.  TERRORISM. or 2.  TOTALITARIANISM.  So ... which would you rather?  LOL Don't know why I find that funny, but I do.  Even though I'm terrified sometimes. It's hard to say what I'm more terrified of:  the potential of being random victim of politically motivated terrorism, or just your run of the mill everyday terrorism by hammer or machete wielding African gangs, committing violent dawn home invasions in packs, or committing carjackings, or committing tram hijackings, FFS.   Well done, Australia.  Nothing like interracial gang home invasion to look forward to.   Judging from the level of anger I'm feeling thinking about this right now, I'd say I'm more pissed about the gangs than I am about potential jihadis ... although I'm not real keen on the prospect of an encounter with the latter. The actual existence of international treaties for assigning rights to alien invaders is about as ridiculous as having to chose between terrorism and totalitarianism.   Where are the rights of the now stateless Europeans in all of this?   Yes, stateless.  Not a single European society has escaped from this criminal capitalist destruction. Dr. Binoy Kampmark Detained for Terror: Proposed Indefinite Detention Laws in Australia By Dr. Binoy Kampmark Global Research, August 08, 2016 Url of this article: http://www.globalresearch.ca/detained-for-terror-proposed-indefinite-detention-laws-in-australia/5540179 The reactive dimension of global politics – at least at the level of many states – is a broader statement about how far things have rotted.  Nothing is more reactive than a State’s response to terrorism, actual or perceived.  The pure evidentiary dimension is neglected in favour of procedural fluff and unmeasurable contingencies. The box-ticking bureaucrat takes precedence over the judicial officer. The Turnbull government has come down rather heavily in its response to a spate of attacks in France and Germany, deciding that it is time that something be done in the face of this supposed global madness.  The prime minister Malcolm Turnbull decided to press the issue in a letter to state leaders urging for the creation of a national regime to indefinitely detain terrorists even after the point of serving their sentence. Civil liberties lawyer Greg Barnes has made the point that such assessments are fundamentally specious. They lack coherence, dimension and remain presumptuous.  The chances, therefore, of a person locked up for years on terrorist charges then engaging in acts of murderous mayhem on leaving, did not compute.  [comment:  I'd have to argue against Barnes on this.  Being locked up for years on terrorist charges may (or may not) be motive for acts of vengeance.  How likely that is, is impossible to say.  Most people would probably want to get on with what is left of their lives.  But you just don't know.  Who wants to take a chance?  On the other hand, who wants to incarcerate indefinitely and likely unjustly?  Again, this impossible choice is brought to you by INSANE POLICIES.  ] The point is an ominous one for at least 13 prisoners convicted over what has been said to be Australia’s largest terrorism plot in New South Wales and Victoria.  After concluding their sentences, the individuals involved in the Pendennis network, led by Melbourne cleric Abdul Benbrika, would have little guarantee of release.  [comment:  wow, I didn't even know Australia had its own terrorist cell.  I tend not to follow much Australian news.   It annoys me more than other kind of news, so I sidestep it normally.  ] Buttering in the face of such extralegal nonsense is always deemed necessary.  The Commonwealth Attorney-General George Brandis explained over the weekend that, “All of the attorneys, as the first law officers of our respective jurisdictions, understand the gravity of the threat that terrorism poses to Australia and its people.”[1] What Brandis fails to mention is that such officers also owe it to the legal profession, its servants and the citizens of a country, to reassuringly ensure that liberties are not unduly tarnished, let alone entirely abandoned, as is being suggested by these measures.  The insolence of office, one so gleefully embraced, comes to mind. With that merry insolence, the views of such officers are indifferent to habeas corpus, and the notion that a person who does time has (and here is a novelty), actually discharged the burdens placed upon him for such offences. Terrorism is simply being rendered, rather nonsensically, exceptional, an offence that demands special treatment.  [comment:  the problem is that politically motivated terrorism *is* exceptional.  Thanks again, politicians and liberal assh*les.  ] If detention were to be infinite, the hierarchy of punishment would have to be abandoned in favour of an arbitrary notion of convict and permanently incarcerate if you can.  This would effectively eliminate the notion of sentencing as having any value bringing, instead, the fictional notion of a hypothetical terrorist attack to the fray.  [comment:  this is a hard one.  Nobody wants to be the cuck that leaves themselves open to terrorism.  Oh, wait.  The horse has already f*cking bolted because these Aussie cucks have done just that.  Now it's a choice of terrorism (or potential terrorism) or totalitarianism.   What's it gonna be?] Instead of expressing outrage at the heavy-handed, not to mention clumsy approach of the Commonwealth government, the NSW Attorney-General Gabrielle Upton, congratulated Turnbull “on this initiative.  The stakes are high for NSW: make no mistake.  We have more people in our prisons than any other state that would be subject to these laws.”[2]  All the more reason, one would have thought, for not endorsing such regulations.  [comment:  OMG.  Sydney is Terrorist Central. ] Upton’s shoddy reasoning pivots on mere words: “terrorism” qualifies for blanket imprisonment and detention.  Terrorism posed such a risk to the community it meant that no one could be “complacent”. The situation becomes even more peculiar given the observations by such individuals a Greg Moriarty, national counter-terrorism coordinator and evidently self-proclaimed amateur penologist.  All agencies in the business of “national counter-terrorism” were “committed to preventing people from becoming terrorists; to disrupting and diverting people who are heading down a path towards violent extremism; and to rehabilitating people who are convicted for terrorism offences.” But for all such noble ventures, there would always be those eggs that would stay rotten, where it was “not possible, or where there are significant areas of doubt”.  This mealy-mouthed assertion is a neat illustration about executive paranoia, enabling people to be detained at the pleasure of the sovereign.  [comment:  where can people go to escape this ugly bind?  There is nowhere among European civilisation that this has not been replicated by the assh*le nation destroying capitalists. ] In Australia’s legal soil, noxious precedents flower that enable the Attorney-Generals at all levels of government to push for an agenda hostile to the detainee.  In mental health administration, there are those permanently kept away from trial (and hence a genuine testing of their cases) for reasons of psychic disturbance. [comment:  this gets worse and worse.  Again, what do you do?  Let disturbed ppl into the community or let potential terrorists into the community ... Oh, wait.  They have.  Assh*les. ] The High Court has also done its bit to add to the regulatory framework of indefinite detention by arguing that stateless individuals can be indefinitely kept at the discretion of the State, a sort of administrative purgatory where risk from the detainee might manifest.   The case of Ahmed Al-Kateb remains something of a nightmare in that regard, an outcome premised on the shallow notion that non-judicial detention is entirely permissible provided it be for the purposes of removal.[3]  [comment:  thank f*ck the High Court is arguing in favour of something sensible.  What else are you supposed to do, in the circumstances?  Non-judicial purposes of removal sounds good to me.  ] There was just one problem for Al-Kateb: his argument that any detention could not be lawful if it has ceased to have a valid basis for removal from Australia was dismissed with more than a bit of contempt.  [comment:  being convicted of terrorist plotting sounds like a good start to a 'valid basis' for removal to me.  I'd add rape, home invasion, carjacking and more to that list of everyday terrorism. ] There are also those deemed genuine refugees under the United Nations Refugee Convention who are not permitted out of Australia’s brutal detention regime because they have been assessed, courtesy of the domestic espionage network ASIO, as a security risk.  All that, despite having no formal charges level.  The proposed change by Turnbull, to that end, remains dangerously, and lamentably consistent with enlarged and unaccountable executive power.   [comment:  thank f*ck for ASIO.   Who gives a sh*t about 'formal charges', invader rights and the status of those seeking to invade under illegitimate international treaty.  Only a suicidal liberal cuck would give a sh*t about technicalities of the fraud that is the nation destroying post WWII 'human rights' rort.   ] Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  Email: bkampmark@gmail.com Notes [1] http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2016/s4514207.htm?site=darwin [2] http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2016/s4514207.htm?site=darwin [3] http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp/au/cases/cth/HCA/2004/37.html?stem=0&synonyms=0&query=al-kateb Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. Copyright © Dr. Binoy Kampmark, Global Research, 2016 These were the initial feelings on the topic. But embracing totalitarianism in exchange for safety is signing up to be subject to the same totalitarian controls (and potential abuses). It's a no win.