In the early hours of this morning, prior to his inauguration, a brief business-like transaction took place at Blair House, the presidential guesthouse where President-elect Donald Trump will be spending the night.
Out of sight of television cameras, and with only a few people in attendance, he became the most powerful man on Earth, with the nuclear codes given to him and him alone.
His Secretary of Defence, Secretary of State and National Security Adviser can all be opposed to a nuclear attack on a foreign target, be it Beijing, Moscow, the Middle East or elsewhere, but nothing can stop Donald Trump if his mind is made up.
Without the pomp and circumstance that consumed much of the rest of the day, Trump, who in all likelihood will be in the company of his controversial new National Security Adviser Michael T. Flynn, will meet outgoing National Security Adviser Susan Rice.
Trump will be handed an object known as “the biscuit”, which closely resembles a plastic credit card.
He is the only one who can use them. No matter how good a likeness someone posing as the President may possibly appear, the biometric coding on “the biscuit” ensures that only one person on Earth can authorise the firing of America’s nuclear weapons.
The biscuit will remain either on or nearby Donald Trump for as long as he remains President.
It in turn unlocks “the football”, the briefcase which acts essentially as a nuclear command and control centre. It is carried by a military officer who remains in close proximity to the President at all times.
“The football” includes the so-called “Black Book”, which lists potential nuclear targets, strategies and scenarios.
Research Fellow at the US Studies Centre at Sydney University, Brendan Thomas-Noone, told The New Daily that despite the momentous symbolism of the moment, the actual event itself is straightforward: “The whole thing is over quickly. There is no pomp and ceremony. The handover does not include briefings on the ethicacy, morality or strategic use of nuclear weapons. It is a very mechanical moment.”Rain started falling as President Trump delivered his inaugural address. Photo: Getty
Depending on your political perspective, the nuclear codes have just been handed to a reckless dilettante unfit to have them or the first person in many years bold enough to confront the US military industrial complex.
And despite the world’s nervousness at Trump the unknown quantity, some argue the nuclear codes are now in safer hands than if a known hawk like Hillary Clinton had won the election.
What is clear is the enormous power that now rests in the hands of Mr Trump.
“Many presidents have reported they are sobered by the experience and sense of responsibility,” Mr Thomas-Noone said. “They now have the power to kill millions of people. The immediacy of that power is a heavy burden.”
Depending on how they are counted, America has more than 1700 operational nuclear weapons.
Of its twelve nuclear powered ballistic submarines, at a minimum one or two of them are always on patrol, placing their nuclear weapons within easy reach of the world’s major cities.
If a President were to use the codes, in less than a quarter of an hour millions of people could be dying in Moscow, Beijing or elsewhere. At the same time, more than 400 Intercontinental Ballistic missiles could be launched from silos based on US soil, mostly in the mid-West.
These long-range missiles, with a speed of up to 15,000 miles per hour, can decimate populations thousands of kilometres away.
Whatever experience Mr Trump has had in business and life before today, nothing has prepared him – or for that matter any president before him – for the awesome power now in his hands.
While Americans digest the news that Russia almost certainly tried to influence the election that delivered Donald Trump the presidency, new research indicates the US is an old hand at trying to sway votes in other countries.
Political scientist Dov Levin of Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University says the US has attempted to influence elections overseas as many as 81 times between 1946 and 2000.
Levin doesn’t include Australia in his data set, even though he admitted to The New Daily this week the 1975 dismissal of the Whitlam government had been “one of the primary candidates” he’d examined.
“However when I checked this case out, the documents from a recent comprehensive collection of declassified US government documents on US foreign policy towards Australia during those years provided no evidence of such an American intervention in the 1975 election campaign for one of the parties,” Levin said.
Australian author Andrew Fowler told The New Daily it was broadly accepted America tried to interfere in the Australian political situation in 1975 that led to the Whitlam government being dismissed and then voted out in favour of Malcolm Fraser weeks later.
Fowler, author of The War on Journalism: Media Moguls, Whistleblowers and the Price of Freedom, told The New Daily while the evidence America wanted to see the end of the Whitlam government was circumstantial, “there is a considerable amount of it”.
Others, like Australian-born, British-based journalist John Pilger are even more convinced that the 1975 poll was subject to US interference.
In his book A Secret Country, Pilger wrote that former CIA agent Victor Marchetti explained the US-Australian relationship thus: “So long as Australians keep electing the right people then there’ll be a stable relationship between the two countries.”Nixon and Kissinger weren’t fans of the Whitlam government. Photo: Getty
The comfortable relationship between Australia and America, which had endured since World War II, almost came to an end when Australians elected the left-leaning Whitlam in 1972.
The new PM believed that a foreign power should not control his country’s resources and dictate its economic and foreign policies. He was particularly discomfited by the existence of American bases on Australian soil.
Whitlam demanded to know if and why the CIA was running a spy base at Pine Gap near Alice Springs, a giant vacuum cleaner which, as Edward Snowden revealed, allows the US to spy on pretty much everyone and anything.
Marchetti, the CIA officer who had helped set up Pine Gap, later told Pilger: “This threat to close Pine Gap caused apoplexy in the White House … a kind of Chile [coup] was set in motion.”
Author Fowler said Australia’s politicians repeatedly stated there was little difference between America’s best interests and those of Australia.
“But we know from the statements of former prime ministers Malcolm Fraser and Paul Keating that is not the case,” he said, adding: “The problem is they don’t tell us that when they’re in office.
“The Anzus alliance only matters to the Americans to serve their own interests. The most important part of the alliance, Pine Gap, helps them fight foreign wars. It is no longer just a listening post.”Pine Gap hindered the relationship between US leaders and Whitlam. Photo: Getty
The War on Journalism records that by 1974 the dominant Murdoch press turned solidly against Whitlam.
The new US Ambassador to Australia, Marshall Green, appointed by US President Richard Nixon, was freshly drafted in from Chile, where the CIA had helped topple the democratically elected President Salvador Allende the previous year.
Before long, communiques to the US State Department reported that Murdoch had issued confidential instructions to editors of his newspapers to “Kill Whitlam”.
With key figures in the Labor Party describing the then bombing in Vietnam as “corrupt and barbaric” and threatening to close the US bases in Australia, the CIA stepped in.
In 1975 senior CIA figure Theodore Shackley wrote to ASIO: “The CIA feel that if this problem cannot be solved they do not see how our mutually beneficial relations are going to continue.”Author John Pilger is convinced that the 1975 Australian poll was subject to US interference.
Pilger records that on November 10, 1975, Whitlam was shown a top secret telex message sourced to Shackley, the head of the CIA’s East Asia Division, who had helped run the coup against Allende in Chile. Shackley’s message was read to Whitlam. It said that the Prime Minister of Australia was a security risk in his own country.
The day before, Governor-General Sir John Kerr had visited the headquarters of the Australian Defence Signals Directorate, another of Australia’s national security agencies, and was briefed on the “security crisis”.
On November 11, 1975, the day Whitlam was to inform Parliament about the secret CIA presence in Australia, he was dismissed by the Governor-General.
Dr Alison Broinowski, Vice-President of the group Honest History, told The New Daily America’s interference in the Australian electoral processes in 1975 appeared obvious.
“From writings by Marian Wilkinson, Christopher Boyce, John Pilger, Jenny Hocking, James Curran, and others, it is clear that Whitlam came close to closing down the bases and getting sacked in return,” she said.
“The trouble is those who know the whole story are either dead or won’t say how or whether the US actually changed the outcome of the election. If they did, it would only be one of many around the world, before and since. “The hypocrisy in relation to Russian interference, if it happened, is breathtaking.”
For his part, Professor Curran, lecturer in history at Sydney University, is less convinced of US involvement in 1975’s tumultuous events.
In his widely praised book Unholy Fury: Whitlam and Nixon at War, Professor Curran records the bad blood between President Richard Nixon, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the Whitlam government.
Nixon dismissed the Australian PM as a “peacenik”, Kissinger called him a “bastard”, while senior Australian ministers claimed the White House was being run by “thugs” and “maniacs”.
Professor Curran told The New Daily that while there was a long history of the US interfering in foreign elections, “it doesn’t include Australia in 1975”.
“There was clearly some kind of CIA activity in Australia that was at the very least being actively considered in 1975,” he said. “But I found no smoking gun – no documentary evidence – to suggest that the US was involved either in Whitlam’s downfall or the 1975 election.”
Nevertheless, with British, American and Australian US intelligence agencies all working against him, a Governor-General later recorded as being closely supported by the CIA and with the Murdoch press baying for his blood, the Whitlam government fell.
The history books record that an emissary of the US government, Assistant Secretary of State Warren Christopher later told Whitlam the “US Administration would never again interfere in the domestic political processes of Australia”.
Critics argue there is really only one reason the promise has been kept: Australia has been entirely compliant with America’s wishes. That may all be about to change. Trump may not just be about to herald a shake-up in America, but a shake-up of the alliance in which generations of Australian politicians and bureaucrats have placed so much faith.
One day last autumn Qantas pilot Paul Whyte hired a single-engine Cessna 172 airplane from the Northern Rivers Aero Club in Lismore and flew out to sea.
He disappeared off the radar about 11 kilometres north east of Byron Bay.
The 46-year-old Mr Whyte was a regular at the club and, to begin with, there was nothing particularly unusual about that day. Except that he never came back, crashing the plane into the sea at an estimated speed of 200 kilometres per hour.
Police concluded there were no suspicious circumstances. Mr Whyte’s death was a suspected suicide. Wreckage of the plane was only found two months later during a naval search. There was no sign of his body.
In photographs, Mr Whyte presents as a cheerful, pleasant-looking man with seemingly everything to live for.
There were news reports that he was struggling with a broken marriage. Males in the divorce-age bracket top statistics for suicide and unexplained accidents, including drownings.
Despite his personal struggles, Mr Whyte passed a mental health test one month before his death; and had recently flown a passenger plane from Brisbane to Los Angeles with a capacity of 467 people.
Mr Whyte made a final call to his daughters before his death.
There is a long history of pilots taking their own lives, from Japan’s Kamikazes to the September 11 Twin Towers attacks that transformed travel and security in the modern era.
Outside of the military or ideological-driven, however, most suicides by pilot are lonely affairs. One lone pilot flying out to sea or into a mountain, decisively ending his or her own life. And Mr Whyte’s sad story is a classic case.
Murder suicide
Not all pilots with a determination to leave their mortal coil do so on their own.
Mr Whyte’s death came a year and a half after Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, who suffered from depression, deliberately crashed a plane into the French Alps killing all 150 people on board.
That incident brought worldwide attention to the screening processes for pilots and their incidence of suicide and depression.
Germanwings co–pilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately flew his plane into a mountainside in March 2015.
Now a new study from Harvard School of Public Health, the first to describe airline pilot mental health independent of the industry, with a focus on depression and suicidal thoughts, shows that a significant number – 4.1 per cent of pilots – have recurring feelings that life is not worth living.
On March 24 2015, Germanwings Flight 9525 was scheduled to fly from Barcelona to Dusseldorf.
Shortly after making final contact with air traffic control at 9:30am, the pilot left the cockpit. At this point, with the plane flying at an altitude of 12,000 metres, co-pilot Lubitz locked himself in the cockpit and changed the flight monitoring system in order to put the aircraft into descent.
German prosecutors investigating the case revealed that before acquiring his pilot’s licence, Mr Lubitz received prolonged treatment for major psychological problems and had received therapy for suicidal tendencies.
Germanwings pilot Andreas Lubitz.
Just days before the crash, Mr Lubitz conducted internet searches on the terms “cockpit doors” and “suicide”.
Lufthansa, Germanwings’ parent company, said it had no idea the pilot had been treated for suicidal tendencies because of Germany’s strict privacy laws forbidding access to his medical records.
The black box recorder revealed the pilot screaming at Mr Lubitz to open the door moments before the plane plunged into the Alps.
Damning study
It was Mr Lubitz’s fateful decision that day to end not just his own life but all those on board, that led to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s study.
The study found that hundreds of commercial airline pilots currently flying may be clinically depressed.
It is the first to describe airline pilot mental health, with a focus on depression and suicidal thoughts, outside of the information derived from aircraft accident investigations, regulated health examinations, or identifiable self-reports, all of which are records protected by civil aviation authorities and airline companies.
For those sources of information, there is a strong disincentive for pilots to accurately report if they are suffering from depressive symptoms. Pilots are justifiably worried about their careers if word gets out that they are struggling with depression or suicidal thoughts.
The study took in pilot responses from 50 countries, including many from Australia.
The Harvard study used an anonymous survey to overcome these concerns, with respondents recruited from unions, airline companies and airports via email, newsletters, word-of-mouth, handing postcards to pilots and aviation publication advertisements.
Pilots from more than 50 different countries participated in the web-based survey, with 11.1 per cent from Australia. Questions concerning depression and mental health were hidden within the questionnaire so as not to reveal that the main focus was mental health.
Lead author of the study, Professor Joseph Allen, said globally some 350 million people suffer from depression, but less than half receive treatment, with social stigma being one of the main barriers to seeking care.
“There is a veil of secrecy around mental health issues in the cockpit,” Prof Allen said.
We found that many pilots currently flying are managing depressive symptoms, and it may be that they are not seeking treatment due to the fear of negative career impacts.
“By using an anonymous survey, we were able to guard against people’s fears of reporting due to stigma and job discrimination.”
Prof Allen told The New Daily: “Since the Germanwings crash there have been many groups actively working on enhancing mental health support services for pilots.
“We support the efforts by unions, pilots, airlines and regulators. Our study was designed to obtain a more accurate picture of the extent of this issue in the pilot workforce in order to assist these efforts.”
A greater proportion of male than female pilots reported that they had experiences nearly every day of loss of interest, feeling like a failure, trouble concentrating and thinking they would be better off dead.
The older the better
In general terms, pilots over 60 years of age showed the best mental health, reporting less depression than any other age group, with 85.2 per cent reporting not feeling depressed or hopeless on a single day in the previous two weeks.
They also reported similar high percentages for not feeling bad about themselves or having trouble concentrating.
Fortunately, most pilots – on average 95.8 per cent across all age groups – do not report they feeling that they would be better off dead or hurting themselves.
However, an average of 3.1 per cent (3.3 per cent in the age group 41-50 and 3.7 per cent in the age group 60-plus), reported feeling they would be better off dead on several days in the previous two weeks.
One third of pilots surveyed felt that mental health issues impacted on their ability to do their work.
Of all pilots, 0.6 per cent have thoughts of self-harm or being better off dead nearly every day.
In all, 33.9 per cent of pilots report that mental health issues impact on their ability to do their work, take care of things at home and to get along with others. These problems included poor appetite, having little energy, restlessness, trouble concentrating and feeling bad about themselves.
David Booth, president of the Australian Federation of Air Pilots (AFAP), which represents nearly 4500 pilots, told The New Daily the Germanwings incident was the catalyst for a greater focus on the mental health of pilots.
The AFAP offers free, confidential psychological counselling 24 hours, seven days a week from specialised occupational psychologists trained in pilot specific issues, an initiative well supported by members.
Mr Booth, a 737 captain with a major Australian airline, said many pilots were attracted to the profession as children, enraptured by the sense of adventure, the purity, uniqueness and romance of flight.
But the realities and stress of a job as a commercial pilot did not always live up to the fantasy.
“Mental health is no longer a taboo issue, which has historically been the case in aviation,” he said.
Similar to other professions such as medicine, flying is seen as glamorous and exciting. But it is a high-pressure job.
“You are coming to work every day knowing that if you make an error the consequences can be very severe.
“And you are being monitored on many levels: your peers are watching you, you’re being recorded on the flight deck by the cockpit voice recorder while everything the plane does is digitally recorded and vetted by the company.”
Mr Booth said the annual medical examination added stress, because to fail the medical could mean loss of your livelihood. As well there was a simulator review every six months, where the pilot’s proficiency was assessed. A bad day in the simulator puts your employment under review.
An additional new pressure comes from the digital age.
Some pilots feel additional stress from passengers posting flight images on social media.
“If anything goes down it will be recorded and posted on social media, so you are being monitored not just by your peers and the company but by every last passenger on board, who now have power through social media,” Mr Booth said.
Depression epidemic
The Harvard study found not only that 4.1 per cent of pilots reported suicidal thoughts, but that a total of 12.6 per cent reached the threshold for being diagnosed with depression.
Using US figures, this was comparable with other high-stress occupations.
Twelve per cent of deployed military officers were either experiencing major depressive disorder or displaying related symptoms, with the figure rising to 13 per cent for veterans. Serving police officers ranged from 10-17 per cent, depending on the study.
Dr Stephen Carbone, spokesman for leading mental health organisation Beyond Blue, told The New Daily untreated mental health conditions were costing Australian employers $10.9 billion a year.
“Beyond Blue is working with businesses across Australia to promote the importance of a mentally healthy workplace and providing the resources to help them create such environments,” Dr Carbone said.
Employers need to work with employees to prevent work-related mental health problems.
“We emphasise the need for employers and employees to work together to develop and implement changes to prevent work-related mental health conditions by addressing bullying, harassment, job stress and other factors known to contribute to work related mental health conditions,” he said.
“Most people with depression and anxiety will recover with effective treatment and so creating a supportive workplace becomes a win-win situation.”
If the Harvard study’s findings that four out of every 100 pilots have experienced suicidal thoughts within the past fortnight holds true across the 140,000 commercial pilots worldwide, then more than 5000 pilots have had feelings that life is not worth living in the past fortnight.
Anyone who might be feelings symptoms of depression, anxiety or mental illness should contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.
The biggest unexplored story in Australia over the past 12 months has been the massive expansion of state surveillance.
ASIO has publicly boasted that it is placing both Muslim and anti-Muslim groups, such as Reclaim Australia, under surveillance.
This is a new frontier of policing, where people are being targeted not for what they do, but what they think.
Essentially, people from both sides of the political spectrum are falling under government surveillance because they fail to agree with the government narrative that Australia is a successful multicultural society.
Surveillance is widely criticised by civil libertarians as a tactic of intimidation, social control and harassment with consequences including increased levels of aggravation, stress, violence and poor health.
It is a step into the realm of dark policing, where people are placed under extensive levels of surveillance without having committed a crime. There is no redress.
Since September 2014, the government has passed eight separate tranches of national security legislation that have either amended existing offences, created new ones or extended far-reaching surveillance, arrest and control powers to security agencies.
The blanket legislation also includes restrictions on the reporting of SIOs (Special Intelligence Operations).
However, thanks to ASIO boasting about placing anti-multicultural groups like as Reclaim Australia under surveillance, The New Daily is legally able to write about these operations.
Targeting far-right groups
ASIO wants the plethora of far-right groups, including the United Patriots Front and the True Blue Crew, to know they are under surveillance.
The groups and their spin-off sites are all highly active on social media, and their hot button issue is multiculturalism and Muslim migration, while regarding Pauline Hanson as a hero.
The next most visible protest, or confrontation as the case may be, is the Reclaim Australia rally scheduled for Fremantle on Australia Day.
The date and location has been chosen because Fremantle Council has dispensed with Australia Day celebrations traditionally scheduled for the 26th, replacing them with “One Day” celebrations on the 28th.
Authorities will be watching the next Reclaim Australia rally scheduled for Fremantle on Australia Day. Photo Getty
In a statement, the council said it was “an opportunity for all Australians to come together and celebrate the multicultural diversity of our country”.
For his pains Fremantle mayor Brian Pettit has been labelled a “maggot” by anti-multicultural activists.
On the 29th of this month, Reclaim Australia will also be holding a “Rally against Terror, Reclaim Australian Values” demonstration at Martin Place in Sydney.
Growing threat
At a recent Senate committee hearing, ASIO director-general Duncan Lewis said Reclaim Australia, in particular, was of interest to intelligence agencies, with the threat from such groups growing over the last 18 months.
Not everybody agrees with Mr Lewis’s claims that ASIO officers are the “unsung protectors of our community”.
ASIO head Duncan Lewis says Reclaim Australia, in particular, is of interest to intelligence agencies. Photo AAP
In the book ASIO: The Enemy Within, barrister Michael Tubbs describes the organisation as a parallel secret police force which has done enormous damage to Australian democracy.
Mr Tubbs is scathing of a “rogue institution” and of the generations of politicians on both left and right who had not just let it happen, but had failed to warn the public.
Political leaders had surreptitiously created an atmosphere of fear within society, he claims, and increased the power and reach of ASIO until it effectively became a huge national network of secret political police that spied on political parties, unions, community organisations and individuals.
Adam Molnar, lecturer in criminology at Deakin University, told The New Daily that Australia stood apart from other Western countries in terms of democratic rights.
“Unfortunately what we have seen in recent national security amendments is a move to broad ambiguous definitions which can authorise significant overreach,” he said.
“New surveillance powers, which have come through in the past two years, go beyond similar liberal democratic countries.
“Australia has a long way to go in terms of having robust oversight and accountability mechanisms for these types of powers.”
In August, authorities charged a person linked to Reclaim Australia under federal terror laws for allegedly collecting or making documents to prepare for terrorist acts.
While Reclaim Australia claims the man was only very loosely associated with the organisation and it is happy to see the back of such individuals, the government has used his arrest to show it is not just targeting Muslim groups.
Violence expected
Mr Lewis said Reclaim Australia had “offered violence” in the past and expects it will continue to do so when it confront pro-Islamic groups.
“It is certainly the case that violence has been and, I anticipate, may well continue to be offered by these groups as they confront one another – the Islamic and pro-Islamic group on the one side and the anti-Islamic groups on the other,” he said. “That is business for ASIO: the inciting of, what is essentially, political violence.”
Former president of the Law Institute of Victoria and spokeswoman Katie Miller told The New Daily that Parliament was granting security agencies extremely intrusive powers, including the ability to search someone’s premises, their computers, records, and to install listening devices throughout their homes.
Parliament is granting security agencies “extremely intrusive powers”. Photo: Getty
“These are very serious intrusions into personal liberty,” she said. “These powers should be for a limited function and there should be oversight in the exercise of those powers.
“We need to ask: ‘Why are people being targeted?’
“If they are being targeted for what they think then there would be a question as to whether ASIO has the power to do that.”
Bruce Schneier, one of the world’s leading experts on surveillance and its impacts, and author of Data and Goliath, told The New Daily the results of targeting specific groups was profound.
He said the result would be: “Fear, discrimination, oppression. Again and again, society forgets that targeting entire groups of people in a vain effort to find the few bad actors is both ineffective and toxic. There’s a reason why surveillance states aren’t the ones that flourish; it’s profoundly inhumane.”
One of the founders of Reclaim, Catherine Brennan, told The New Daily thesurveillance the group has been placed under “does not bother us at all”.
“We had a bit of a giggle. What a waste of taxpayers’ money,” Ms Brennan said.
We are just a group of mums and dads who have fallen into this by chance. We didn’t set out to start this. We are not radicals. We are ordinary everyday people.
“Our views are not that far from a lot of Australians. We are not doing anything wrong.
“They could knock on my door and I would say come in for a chat it wouldn’t bother me.”
Members of Reclaim Australia have already been interviewed by the intelligence services. Those interviewed have been obliged to sign contracts not to reveal the subject of their discussions.
“Our experiences with the intelligence services positive,” Ms Brennan said. “We speak with counter-terrorist officers regularly. People will tell us things before they tell the police, they feel more comfortable with us, and we go wow, that is huge, we need to tell the authorities.”
Ms Brennan said Malcolm Turnbull’s claims that Australia was a successful multicultural society were fanciful. “I think Australia’s Prime Minister needs to get off his little throne and live in the real world.”
Andrew Wilkie said the surveillance of groups such as Reclaim Australia raised many questions. Photo: AAP
Independent MP and former intelligence officer Andrew Wilkie, the only individual within the bureaucracy to speak out about the flawed intelligence used to justify Australia’s entry into the Iraq War, told The New Daily the surveillance of groups such as Reclaim Australia raised many questions.
Mr Wilkie said it was an interesting development that ASIO was so publicly revealing who it was placing under surveillance.
“If we make the assumption the agency is competent and it is beneficial to publicise this surveillance, exactly where the benefit is in this case is unclear,” he said.
“There is a merit in the argument it causes additional violence, but there are a lot of times when surveillance warranted and necessary. Whether or not it is a wise thing to publicise the fact is hard to tell; there can be very good reasons to keep an operation secret, and very good reasons to let people know what you are doing.
“The question is whether or not there is political or reputational motive behind ASIO revealing the information. I would be horrified if it was a blatant political move being channelled through ASIO.”
Muslims also under scrutiny
Anti-Islamic groups are so far the only ones feeling the power of the state breathing down their necks.
Muslim communities have long bitterly complained about the impacts of government surveillance on their lives and their communities.
Keysar Trad says surveillance increases paranoia and the suspicion. Photo: AAP
Australia’s best known Muslim spokesman Keysar Trad told The New Daily: “Surveillance including the fear of surveillance increases the paranoia and the suspicion of what or who is around you.
“The fear relating to the level of surveillance is eroding the level of trust of not only authority figures, but even of ordinary people around you, who is monitoring, who is reporting, who is misreading what they see and hear. Surveillance is making people more insular and less social.”
Bernard Gaynor, who served three tours of Iraq while serving in Army intelligence before allegedly being drummed out of the military for his political views, told The New Daily it would be naive of him to think he was not under surveillance.
Playing into the hands of the state
One of the country’s oldest anti-immigration groups is the Australia First Party headed by veteran activist Jim Saleam.
Reclaim Australia is quick to distance itself from Australia First, dismissing it as a “white power” organisation, while Australia First is also at odds with Reclaim Australia, dismissing it as a “bunch of amateurs playing into the hands of the state”.
Australia First was established in 1996, but was quickly eclipsed by the birth of One Nation the following year.
Mr Saleam told The New Daily: “I have always been under surveillance. I am used to it.
“They are using Muslim terrorists as an excuse. The average Australian who might have a criticism of the Australian state or government is not violent.
“There are probably tens of thousands of people under surveillance, ordinary people. It is not right, but it is occurring.”
Mr Saleam said that by peddling an anti-Islamic rhetoric, Reclaim Australia served a government agenda. It allowed the security forces to step in, pretend to be even-handed and exercise even greater control.
“That is where it leads,” he said. ”We think it is dangerous, very dangerous all around.
“Politics is a cruel business. Many of the demonstrators have a heart of gold. They are useful idiots. They haven’t worked out they are being manipulated.”
John Stapleton
Rain started falling as President Trump delivered his inaugural address. Photo: Getty
