Wednesday 20 June 2018

Hideout in the Apocalypse gets a mention in Independent Australia, 20 June, 2018.

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/australia-2018-lies-cover-ups-and-suppression-of-free-speech,11613

   

Propaganda about an endless "war on terror" and a succession of enemies has led to the slow creep of suppression of inquiry, writes former diplomat Dr Alison Broinowski.
GEORGE ORWELL could have been describing today, not the 1930s when he wrote: 
‘In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.' 
In the years since then, the deceitful behaviour of Australia’s allies has got worse — and so has ours.
In 1978, Richard Hall complained about the obsession with "subversion" that had been cultivated for two generations by reactionary leaders in Australia, at the expense of truth.
He wrote in The Secret State:
‘A free society can and should suppress violence but when it suppresses free inquiry it is no longer a free society.’
He could not have imagined the suppression of inquiry in Australia – and particularly Canberra – 40 years later.
Julian Assange was moved eight years ago by similar convictions to take matters into WikiLeaks’ own hands and begin releasing documents on American war crimes in Iraq, U.S. diplomatic machinations worldwide and the internal affairs of the Democratic Party. They were greeted with official outrage because they told the truth. Then, in 2013, American journalist Glenn Greenwaldpublished the revelations of Edward Snowden about mass telecommunications surveillance by the United States. For their pains, both Assange and Snowden are now exiles.
But with that, everything changed, Snowden later recalled:
"The government and corporate sector preyed on our ignorance. But now we know. People are aware now."
Americans may be aware, but John Stapleton is doubtful about how aware Australians are. He and other former journalists are resorting to "faction" to reach the reading public without getting arrested. In his fact-based novel Hideout in the Apocalypse (2018), Stapleton’s alter-ego, Old Alex, despairingly observes governments growing more arrogant, individual politicians becoming increasingly timid, stories in the media thinning in quality and ‘the populace as a whole [growing]increasingly disaffected.’
'The more the authorities claim their secrecy is in the "national interest", the less it’s likely that what they are up to is in the public interest.'
Canberra, where barrister Pam Burton grew up, itself becomes a character in her novel, ‘a shadowy town. Spy city, that’s what it’s become’ (A Foreign Affair, 2016).
Broadcaster Chris Uhlmann is on their wavelength in the latest of his three novels, Secret City(2018). He quotes Malcolm Turnbull cynically harking back to Mark Twain: ‘Only fiction has to be credible.’ This must be the Prime Minister’s take on the "core and non-core" promises of one of his predecessors and the ‘no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS’ of another. Uhlmann can be expected to expand on spies and lies in his Manning Clark lecture on 12 July, as well as on the surveillance culture, which, surreptitiously cultivated, has done considerable damage to Canberra and Australia since 2001.
Noam Chomsky on George Orwell, the Suppression of Ideas and the Myth of American Exceptionalism
We used to believe that official lies and propaganda were what Hitler, Stalin, and Mao did, while in democracies like ours people were free to debate and public servants to advise. Ministers took responsibility for their decisions and resigned for misleading us or the Parliament. The trend is now the other way. As the American founding fathers knew, a well-informed public is essential for a functioning democracy. But with unprecedented access to information, we are adrift in a flood of opinion – some of it factual, some false – and we can fish out of it what suits us, or others want us to believe.
Democratic governments foist on us propaganda about an endless "War on Terror" and a succession of enemies – from radical Islam, to Russian assassins, to Chinese spies – frightening citizens into accepting laws that allow unrestricted invigilation of every aspect of their lives. Paradoxically, while our leaders invoke an "international rules-based order", their laws resemble those of tyrannical regimes, preventing citizens from finding out what those in control are doing and making it unlawful even to ask. The more the authorities claim their secrecy is in the "national interest", the less it’s likely that what they are up to is in the public interest.
Such activities can go on for years before we find out about them. Egregious examples have recently emerged in Australia, thanks to two Royal Commissions and what remains of investigative reporting.
Here are some:
  • The release from 90 sites, including RAAF bases and numerous Fire Brigade stations, of carcinogenic chemicals (poly-fluoroalkyl, PFAS) used as fire retardants continued long after their danger to humans and the environment was known. Australia has not yet joined the 171 countries which have banned them. Class actions for compensation are being contested by the Government.
  • The SAS and senior military officers allegedly covered up serious misbehaviour, possibly including war crimes, that occurred in Afghanistan on at least four occasions between 2007 and 2012. Some of them were revealed by Chris Masters in No Front Line; some are still to be revealed after internal inquiries.
  • The abuse of children by clergy in Australian churches and religious institutions was known and concealed for decades, and many allegations remain unresolved by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
  • The fraudulent and illegal behaviour of Australian banks and insurance companies would not have been publicised without another Royal Commission (Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry), whose establishment conservative politicians sought to prevent. Its final report is still awaited.
  • Allegations of bribery in Malaysia involving the Reserve Bank’s Securency operation have not been resolved. In June 2015, the Victorian Supreme Court suppressed them. After WikiLeakspublished the Court’s order in full in July, the suppression order was lifted (Ben Butler, ‘Bishop finally acknowledges “serious” Najib corruption scandal’, Australian, 29 July 2016).
  • Australian ministers have claimed the "Pacific Solution" sets an example to the world for dealing with asylum seekers. After a 26-year-old Iranian refugee apparently committed suicide, the Refugee Action Coalition reported that he was the 12th person to die in Australian offshore detention and the fifth in Nauru. Australian journalists are not allowed to report on Manus and Nauru and censorship of medical staff was lifted only when they threatened to leave.
  • Australia in 2013, helped in drafting and negotiating the UN Arms Trade Treaty aimed, as the Government announced, ‘to reduce the impact of armed violence on communities around the world’. Yet Australia now seeks to become a military exporter, with part of the defence industry in every state, subsidised by $200 billion of taxpayers’ money. At least that’s not a secret.
Dr Alison Broinowski is a former Australian diplomat, vice-president of Australians for War Powers Reform and vice-president of Honest History.
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Friday 1 June 2018

Surveillance in Australia; Part Three. Pearls and Irritations, 1 June, 2018.

JOHN STAPLETON: Surveillance in Australia; Part Three.

1 June 2018
The democratic contract is broken. The freedom of Australians to go about their daily lives without being watched by their government has vanished with barely a whisper of protest.
Professor of Law at UNSW George Williams argues that the war on terror has recast the relationship between governments and individuals.
The rushed nature of more than 60 pieces of anti-terror legislation passed since 9/11 has shown up flaws in our political system, including the lack of legal rights to privacy or freedom of speech.
Williams says: “In key areas the powers gifted to ASIO are disproportionate. There are a long list of things where the operation of ASIO now lies outside normal democratic values.”
Barrister Greg Barns, adviser to Wikileaks, argues that with the gifting of ever more powers to ASIO Australian democracy is dying.
He describes last year’s spectacle of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and the state premiers lining up to declare their support for the arresting of suspects as young as 10 and their detention for 14 days without charge as sickening.
ASIO can act with virtual immunity and could, during the course of this detention, deprive people of sleep and refuse access to family members, a clear breach of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Mr Barns says: “ASIO has the capacity to invade every person’s every communication and movement. The use of taxpayer funds to surveil, harass and spy on NGOs and ethnic groups is now ASIO’s bread and butter.”
The best pointer to the present is the past. Dr Meredith Burgmann’s book Dirty Secrets: Our ASIO Files revealed a long history of excessive surveillance of Australian citizens, and misuse of the information thus obtained.
Under the 30-year secrecy rules ASIO more than 10,000 files, often heavily redacted, have come to light.
The targets speak of the waste of public resources that went into their surveillance, and the often slipshod or inaccurate nature of the results.
The organisation formed to root out subversion took upon itself to monitor everyone from gay activists to early feminists. The anti-intellectuality of a military ethos is evident throughout the files.
Humans are mammals. If the feel they are being watched, they instinctively fear they are about to be eaten.
Surveillance causes the perpetrators to act like predators and the targets like prey.
Harvard’s Bruce Schneier, author of Data and Goliath, says psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, novelists, and technologists have all written about the effects of surveillance. It creates ill health and strips people of their dignity.
“There’s a reason why surveillance states aren’t the ones that flourish; it’s profoundly inhumane,” he says.
The Australian government has ignored the negative consequences, hoping only for a docile population.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald, author of the book on Edward Snowden No Place to Hide, writes this model of surveillance creates the illusion of freedom:
The compulsion to obedience exists in the individual’s mind. Individuals choose on their own to comply, out of fear that they are being watched. With the control internalised, the overt evidence of repression disappears because it is no longer necessary. It is a profound victory.
Of all the target groups, Muslims have been the most impacted by the expansion of the surveillance state. It contributes directly to estrangement and resentment, and to the extremism it is meant to resolve.
To a man, or woman, the Muslim minority regard Australia’s participation in Middle Eastern wars as akin to terror, placing them at direct odds with the government.
Muslim spokesman Keysar Trad says: “The fear relating to surveillance is eroding the level of trust of not only authority figures, but of ordinary people, who is monitoring, who is reporting, who is misreading what they see and hear..”
On the opposite side of the panel, members of Reclaim Australia shrug off their surveillance, saying it’s a stupid waste of public money and they are not doing anything wrong. They have already been interviewed by the intelligence services and obliged to sign contracts keeping the discussions secret.
Co-founder Catherine Brennan says. “We are not radicals. Our views are not that far from a lot of Australians. We speak with counter-terrorist officers regularly. People will tell us things before they tell the police, they feel more comfortable with us.”
The key to the lack of protest over surveillance lies with the nature of public debate.
There have long been rumours that agencies have placed personnel or informants throughout Australia’s media organisations.
For decades the CIA has spent millions manipulating the media, including placing personnel into key positions. There is every reason to assume something similar is occurring here.
Journalist Andrew Fowler’s new book Shooting the Messenger says: “The fear of terrorism is used by governments as a way of persuading populations to hand over billions of dollars to fund mass surveillance systems. These systems suck up vast amounts of material around the globe and use it mainly to further their economic, strategic and diplomatic objectives.”
Tuned out, indifferent to the antics of the political caste, the remarkable thing is how quickly the public has accepted all of this: the data retention laws, the jailing of  whistleblowers and journalists, the extensive monitoring of social media by public servants.
Even the detention of 10-year-olds.
The devolution of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation into little more than a government propaganda wing could not have been better illustrated than last year’s story of the Prime Minister’s pledge to introduce legislation to detain without charge people accused of terror related offenses without charge.
For their expert the ABC chose Barrie Cassidy, presenter of Insiders each Sunday, who fulsomely agreed with the government that a loss of civil liberties was necessary in the age of terror.
It was not as if critics were hard to find.
President of the Law Council of Australia, Fiona McLeod SC, said: “It’s the combined shock of having a pre-charge detention of up to 14 days and the revelation they’re going to seek to have this extended to the age of 10. We’re talking about grade four kids. This has crossed the line.”
One of Australia’s most famous sons, whistleblower Julian Assange, has been ignored or reviled by his own government. Exactly the reason why the last word belongs to him:
“The world is not sliding, but galloping into a new transnational dystopia. The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. Within a few years, global civilisation will be a postmodern surveillance dystopia, from which escape for all but the most skilled individuals will be impossible.”
John Stapleton worked for more than 20 years as a staff reporter on The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald.
A collection of his journalism is being constructed here.
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