Dean,

- ”How many times have they been used so far?”

I don’t know. That’s the whole point. That sort of information kept secret. But thanks giving me opportunity to the raise point though.

- ”Which freedoms of future generations have been destroyed?”

I didn’t say they had yet. I said that the government had set a precedence for it. Please read more carefully next time.

- ”You then rely on more conspiracy theories…”

Where did I mention the conspiracy theories?

- What evidence do you have that our civil rights are being eroded?

Gee, now where do I start?

- The increased executive discretion to target individuals and organisations because of their political views;
- The ability to hold people for 2 weeks based on even the slightest suspicion with no charge no access to a layer or a phone call to their family. Effectively, the government can make people just disappear;
- New powers for the police to stop, search and demand documents without warrant.

I have to go now but I can keep going later if you'd like? Just give me the go ahead.

As I said on another thread, we’re lucky it hasn’t gone too far in Australia yet but you only have to take a look at the US to see were we’re potentially heading. I’ll give you examples of that also if you’d like? But like I said, I have to be somewhere to be at the moment…bye.

Hi y'all
Rache and Mr Man have pretty well summed up the flaws in the Professor's argument. And, yes, he is the proponent of torture previously published in this forum and elsewhere.

The question is, what is his connection with Radovan Karodzic and Slobodan Miloscevic? And, is it true he is connected with an anti-zionist right wing group planning a bombing in muslim mufti to further entrench anti-islamic and fascist views?

The answers are "probably not". But if ASIO, the AFP, or the Victorian Police were to receive information to this effect, Professor Bagaric would not be able to inform us about his detention, his questioning, or, if he got his way, his torture (which maybe why he advocates torture).

The point is that a professor's opinions on populist topics are often just as ill-formed as the most ill-educated redneck's: in this case, a professor just practises a little poorly disguised sophistry that is beyond the average redneck.

Knowing the law and knowing what it is there to do are two different things, as the good professor so admirably demonstrates, perhaps all unawares.

odsoc

Part One

Besides idealism and pragmatism, let’s take lessons from history and use our brains somewhat. We should then contemplate what any terrorist kingpin like bin Laden and his ilk would want to clap their hands about - the turning of modern unipolar America and us Anglicaholic hangers-on into fascistic societies, simply through reaction not so different from fear from native (terrorist) attacks in colonial times.

Not much different in principle, anyhow. For haven’t we been trespassing in foreign lands once again as we promised not to after WW2 declaring it was the end of colonialism. Did not we bring in the Marshall Plan after WW2, as a Christian example of forgiveness and not firing another shot, even though we could have left Germany and Japan as deservedly third rate nations for another five decades or so.

But even at the time of the Marshall Plan with a rapidly recovering Germany and Japan on our side we forgot about sobriety in the name of necessity. So while historians call the 18-19th-C period the tea and spice economy, they call the present one the oil and gas economy - because there is little doubt that without oil or gas right now we would be in a sorry state

Part Two

It was so interesting reading in last week’s Guardian about Shirin Ebadi, an intellectual Iranian woman, who became a human rights lawyer who has fought for Iran to become more democratic. Even so, Ebadi appears to have little time for America owing to the way the US horned in when her father also a lawyer rose to become deputy minister of agriculture under PM Mohammed Mossadegh (whom she describes as the Iranian Gandhi of her country’s independence movement), who lost his job after his boss was toppled in the US-backed 1953 coup when the puppet Shah Rezah was brought back to power.

Both the US and Britain were interested in the high quality Iranian oil, which Mossadegh had been organisng to nationalise. According to Ebadi, it was so humiliating to watch the US moving into her former great Persian homeland as if it was some native backwater, its leaders to be annexed or deposed at the whim of an American President and his CIA.

Also Ebadi says today that looking back she wishes that Iran had only possessed water rather than oil.

Ebadi in her wisdom, not only challenges an Islam that history shows could have been far more democratic than it is today, but also our Western undemocratic economic greed shown so much in the reasoning to depose Mossadegh and her father. Maybe us Onliners might
even take a lesson regarding Iran today.

Mirko says that “the best way to nullify loopy views is to dowse them with copious doses of reality.”

Okay Mirko please explain the difference between these real life experiences and your theoretical spin.

You say: “We’ve had control orders for years. If you hassle an ex-partner or neighbour they can swan down to the local court and control your movements by getting an intervention or restraining order which limits where you can go and who you can communicate with.”

Okay. A police officer told me to go down to the local court and get a restraining order after a neighbour punched me in the head. The neighbour had admitted the offence to the officer. My wife and children were justifiably afraid of the creep responsible for the attack.

Now off we go, fill out the forms and the lady behind the counter, to the best of my recollection, asks: “Did he threaten you.”

“What do mean –did he threaten me? He knocked me unconscious, I was carted away in an ambulance. They have been hassling us for months, a group of his friends bashed me two years ago (don’t get me started on how certain police helped cover that up). My kids have a right to walk down our street without feeling threatened. Here ring the police officer if want confirmation.”

Ignoring my request she asks: “So he didn’t threaten you?”

“What do you call a punch in the head for simply asking his son to stop shining laser light at motorists. For asking my assailant to stop yelling at his own kids and calling them ‘little f….’, the guys out of control.”

“Did he threaten you – did he say that he intended to hurt you. All you have to do is write in here (she points to the relevant section) what he said to warrant a restraining order. Like did he say “I’ll kill you, or something like that. You have to write something like that in here”.

Frustrated, I say: “What do you call punching someone when they aren’t even looking?”

continued

So I wrote that the person had punched me in the head, and his behaviour was generally threatening and, as a consequence, my family and I felt threatened.

My daughter, who was one of about four people who witnessed the incident (I had my hands on her waste and was trying to escort her away when he hit me) interrupted an said that if xxxx hadn’t arrived on the scene as he was moving towards her aggressively she was sure he would have attacked her too. She was terrified of him.

Clerk says: “I can’t take this to a magistrate unless your neighbour has verbally threatened you?”

My assailant is entrenched in the local private-school network/establishment.

And, of course, the police wonder why people, like me, carry knives.

So Mirko, what you are saying is that if the government hassles me I can “swan” on down to the local court and be treated like a piece of shieeet again (don’t get me started on the tricks certain police get up to to protect themselvers and their buddies).

You live in a networked world of privilege and power. You wouldn’t know about the real world, in the real world the ideals of honesty, integrity and so on are just ideals that governments use as propaganda to keep up appearances whilst in reality god only knows what is really going on