http://Jarra.tigblog.org/ What's on the minds of young leaders from around the globe? en-us http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/30611 "That's not just good old fashioned Jew hating talk.
It's policy now."

~]]> Sun, 09 Oct 2005 08:51:00 EDT http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/30611 http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/29964 "And then you start to wait for it at night. You start to want to hear it. You don't want to sleep. You want them to fight. And you're disappointed when it subsides. It's like when it rains and then it thunders and you're scared, and then something inside you swithces and you accept it, want it to rain harder, thunder more. Or you are in an argument and you try not to snap but you start yelling and suddenly you're happy to be angry. Or you're having sex and that moment comes when you lose your inhibition, stop posing, and you both let loose, claw at each other, howl at the moon. Miss Heidi calls it emergency sex. It must have something to do with remembering you're an animal.

So that's what I'm thinking, just kill each other, you animals..."

nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;~ Emergency Sex (and other desperate measures)nbsp;nbsp;True stories from a war zone.]]> Thu, 22 Sep 2005 21:27:00 EDT http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/29964 http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/29675 "America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad."
nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;~ Resignation Speech, 1975.]]> Tue, 13 Sep 2005 02:09:00 EDT http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/29675 http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/22749

"Forget about the notion that our emotions can be kept at bay."

]]> Wed, 09 Mar 2005 06:21:00 EST http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/22749 http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/20399

~

Persons of Mass Dysfunction.

~]]> Thu, 04 Nov 2004 05:15:00 EST http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/20399 http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/20365 Ohio.]]> Wed, 03 Nov 2004 02:09:00 EST http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/20365 http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/19906 "I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious."
nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;~ Henry Louis Mencke]]> Wed, 13 Oct 2004 08:07:00 EDT http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/19906 http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/19267 ]]> Wed, 08 Sep 2004 06:49:00 EDT http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/19267 http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/18808


At peace, I now write: "In the beginning was the act."
nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;~ Goethe, Faust

]]> Sat, 14 Aug 2004 22:04:00 EDT http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/18808 http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/18351 Worth reading these excerpts all the way through, in order. A very chilling story.

~

Taken from http://www.caedefensefund.org/overview.html#070804

~

FBI HARASSMENT CONTINUES--ARTIST FACES 20-YEAR CHARGES
July 8, 2004

Kurtz and Ferrell face 20-year charges of mail and wire fraud in federal court arraignment

Dr. Steven Kurtz, Associate Professor of Art at the University of Buffalo, was arraigned and charged in Federal District Court in Buffalo today on four counts of mail and wire fraud (United States Criminal Code, Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1341 and 1343), which each carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

The arraignment of Dr. Robert Ferrell, Professor of Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh, who was indicted along with Kurtz, has been postponed for a week for health reasons.

The defendants were charged not with bioterrorism, as listed on the Joint Terrorism Task Force's original search warrant and subpoenas, but with a glorified version of "petty larceny," in the words of Kurtz attorney Paul Cambria. The laws under which the indictments were obtained are normally used against those defrauding others of money or property, as in telemarketing schemes. Historically, these laws have been used when the government could not prove other criminal charges. (See http://www.caedefensefund.org/ for background and full text of indictment.

Under the arraignment conditions, Kurtz is subject to travel restrictions, random and scheduled visits from a probation officer, and periodic drug tests.


EMINENT SCIENTISTS CONFUSED AND ALARMED

A great number of people are wondering why this seemingly absurd case is still being pursued.

"I am absolutely astonished," said Donald A. Henderson, Dean Emeritus of the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health and resident scholar at the Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Henderson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bush for his work in heading up the World Health Organization smallpox eradication program and was appointed by the Bush administration to chair the National Advisory Council on Public Preparedness.

"Based on what I have read and understand, Professor Kurtz has been working with totally innocuous organisms... to discuss something of the risks and threats of biological weapons--more power to him, as those of us in this field are likewise concerned about their potential use and the threat of bio-terrorism." Henderson noted that the organisms involved in this case--Serratia marcescens and Bacillus atrophaeus--do not appear on lists of substances that could be used in biological terrorism.

University of California at San Diego Professor of Design Engineering Natalie Jeremijenko noted that scientists ship materials to each other all the time. "I do it, my lab students do it. It's a basis of academic collaboration.... They're going to have to indict the entire scientific community."

Perhaps with such an outcome in mind, preeminent science magazine Nature has called on scientists to support Kurtz. "As with the prosecution of some scientists in recent years, it seems that government lawyers are singling Kurtz out as a warning to the broader artistic community.... Art and science are forms of human enquiry that can be illuminating and controversial, and the freedom of both must be preserved as part of a healthy democracy--as must a sense of proportion".


FACE-SAVING MEASURE OR WARNING TO ARTISTS?

Some believe that the entire case is merely a face-saving tactic by the FBI: "Recently, federal agents arrested University at Buffalo art professor Steven Kurtz, implying he was a bioterrorist. Now, officials have downgraded that to a mail fraud charge.... The FBI always gets its man, even if it has to change its charge. Jaywalkers, beware".

Others, like the editors of Nature quoted above, see the intent as much more insidious. "It's really going to have a chilling impact on the type of work people are going to do in this arena, and other arenas as well," noted Stephen Halpern, a SUNY Buffalo law professor who specializes in Constitutional law.

Professors and staff from the University of California system express similar fears. "We are both extremely concerned and disturbed that the prosecution of the CAE members and research colleagues is continuing.... We see here a pattern of behavior that leads to the curtailing of academic freedom, freedom of artistic expression, freedom of interdisciplinary investigation, freedom of information exchange, freedom of knowledge accumulation and reflection, and freedom of bona fide and peaceful research. All of which are fundamental rights and cornerstones of a modern academic environment."

"Kurtz's materials are politically, not physically, dangerous," said Mary-Claire King, the University of Washington geneticist who first proved the existence of a gene for hereditary breast cancer. "They [Steve Kurtz and the Critical Art Ensemble] re-create [scientific] ideas using their own way of imaging, and then say, 'Maybe you'd like to look at it this way.' To me, that's teaching. It does not seem to me to threaten homeland security. In fact, I would be threatened to live in a homeland in which that was perceived to be a threat".

CAE had intended to use the bacteria concerned in a project critiquing the history of US involvement in germ warfare experiments, including the Bush administration's earmarking of hundreds of millions of dollars to erect high-security laboratories around the country. Many eminent scientists likewise view these plans as a recipe for catastrophe. "I'm concerned about them from the standpoint of science, safety, security, public health and economics," writes Dr. Richard Ebright, lab director at Rutgers University's Waksman Institute of Microbiology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. "They lose on all counts".


ADDITIONAL ARRAIGNMENT DETAILS
July 8, 2004

The courtroom was packed with press as Steve Kurtz and his lawyer Paul Cambria arrived. The proceedings lasted almost two hours. The charges are the same as in the http://www.caedefensefund.org/indictment.pdf indictment. Kurtz pleaded "not guilty." Most of the court time was devoted to working out the restrictions on the accused (or shall we call him the perp? He certainly did a good perp walk yesterday).

It is important to note that the harassment which continues to characterize this case was evident in the courtroom also. Prosecutor Hochul had filled the jury box with invitees from the FBI and Joint Terrorist Task Force (Department of Defense) guys (they were recognized by Cambria and another lawyer). Since they were not there to give testimony, the purpose of their presence seemed to be to make the situation look more serious legally than it is, thereby hoping to influence the judge to make harsher conditions for the accused. However, the judge did not seem to be intimidated.

Steve will have to see a probation officer every week, and is subject to random visits and inspections by the officer to his home. He is also subject to random drug testing and may have to wear a drug patch. He can travel within the continental United States but has to get special permission for foreign travel (which he can do only for business or family reasons, surrendering his passport every time he returns to the US). He also has to get special permission for any travel that would interrupt meeting with the probation officer. Steve will be allowed to order more "biological materials," but will have to first alert his US probation office, his University Health and Bio-safety officer and his lawyer, Paul Cambria.

Upon being booked, Steve did not have to post bond--if he violates any of the conditions he will have to pay a $1000 fine. He is obligated to report parking tickets or any other official problem, or any interaction with law enforcement authorities. Upon arraignment Steve was finger-printed, photographed, and he gave a urine sample for drug testing. He passed the test!

Steve is still not talking to the press. The next court date is July 28--Ferrell's arraignment, which will include a discussion of the trial.


"BIOTERROR" CHARGES AGAINST ART PROFESSOR DOWNGRADED TO "MAIL FRAUD" IN STEALTH INDICTMENT
June 29th, 2004


Professor Steve Kurtz was charged today by a federal grand jury in Buffalo, New York--not with bioterrorism, as listed on the Joint Terrorism Task Force's original search warrant and subpoenas, but with "petty larceny," in the words of Kurtz attorney Paul Cambria.

Also indicted was Robert Ferrell, head of the Department of Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Public Health. The charges concern technicalities of how Ferrell helped Kurtz to obtain $256 worth of harmless bacteria for one of Kurtz's art projects.

The laws under which the indictments were obtained--Title 18, United States Code, sections 1341 and 1343, covering mail and wire fraud--are normally used against those defrauding others of money or property, as in telemarketing schemes.

This is a far cry from the bioterrorism charges originally sought by the District Attorney. To make a "federal case" out of such minor allegations, the District Attorney will have the burden of proving criminal intent.

"There was very obviously no criminal intent," said Kurtz attorney Cambria. "The intent was to educate and enlighten." Cambria suggested that the pursuit of such a minor case at the federal level was profoundly absurd. "If the University of Pittsburgh feels that there was a contract breach, then their remedy is to sue Steve for $256 in a civil court."


A STEALTH INDICTMENT

The U.S. District Attorney attempted to cast the issue as one of public health and safety in a public press conference called without the knowledge of either defendant's lawyers, thus eliminating the chance of rebuttal. During the conference, parts of which were broadcast on local Buffalo news channels, U.S. Attorney William Hochul and U.S. District Attorney Michael Battle repeatedly alluded to "dangerous" and "bio-hazardous material," even though the charges have nothing to do with such issues, and scientists universally regard the materials in question as safe.

At one point in the press conference, U.S. Attorney Hochul stated that Serratia marcescens, one of the two bacteria ordered by Ferrell, "is in fact a dangerous material in that it can cause pneumonia." Serratia cannot cause pneumonia, only aggravate it in someone who already has it, and very rarely at that. Furthermore, it would be hard to characterize as a "dangerous material" something that high school students routinely use in biology class experiments. (Easily trackable by its bright red color, S. marcescens is commonly used to demonstrate the many ways microbes can be destroyed--e.g. with household bleach. The other bacterium, Bacillus globigii, is also used in experiments as a stand-in for dangerous microbes--precisely because it is harmless.)

Many believe the attempt to cast the $256 technicality as a public health and safety issue is a face-saving measure by the government, which has already expended an enormous amount of time and money in their fruitless pursuit of this case.


ARTISTS SUBPOENAED IN USA PATRIOT ACT CASE

Seven artists have been served subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury that will consider bioterrorism charges against a university professor whose art involves the use of simple biology equipment.

The subpoenas are the latest installment in a bizarre investigation in which members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force have mistaken an art project for a biological weapons laboratory (Background essay). While most observers have assumed that the Task Force would realize the absurd error of its initial investigation of Steve Kurtz, the subpoenas indicate that the feds have instead chosen to press their "case" against the baffled professor.

Two of the subpoenaed artists--Beatriz da Costa and Steve Barnes--are, like Kurtz, members of the internationally-acclaimed Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), an artists' collective that produces artwork to educate the public about the politics of biotechnology. They were served the subpoenas by federal agents who tailed them to an art show at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. More recently subpoenas have been issued to: Adele Henderson, Chair of the Art Department at UB; Paul Vanouse, Professor of Art at UB; Andrew Johnson, Professor of Art at UB; And founding members of CAE, Dorian Burr and Beverly Schlee.


~~~~


FBI ABDUCTS ARTIST, SEIZES ART
May 25, 2004

Feds Unable to Distinguish Art from Bioterrorism
Grieving Artist Denied Access to Deceased Wife's Body

!!!!!!!!!!! :(

~~~~


DEFENSE FUND ESTABLISHED - HELP URGENTLY NEEDED

Steve Kurtz was already suffering from one tragedy when he called 911 early in the morning to tell them his wife had suffered a cardiac arrest and died in her sleep. The police arrived and, cranked up on the rhetoric of the "War on Terror," decided Kurtz's art supplies were actually bioterrorism weapons.

Thus began an Orwellian stream of events in which FBI agents abducted Kurtz without charges, sealed off his entire block, and confiscated his computers, manuscripts, art supplies... and even his wife's body.

Like the case of Brandon Mayfield, the Muslim lawyer from Portland imprisoned for two weeks on the flimsiest of false evidence, Kurtz's case amply demonstrates the dangers posed by the USA PATRIOT Act coupled with government-nurtured terrorism hysteria.

Kurtz's case is ongoing, and, on top of everything else, Kurtz is facing a mountain of legal fees. Donations to his legal defense can be made at http://www.caedefensefund.org/


FEAR RUN AMOK

Steve Kurtz is Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the State University of New York's University at Buffalo, and a member of the internationally-acclaimed Critical Art Ensemble.

Kurtz's wife, Hope Kurtz, died in her sleep of cardiac arrest in the early morning hours of May 11. Police arrived, became suspicious of Kurtz's art supplies and called the FBI.

Within hours, FBI agents had "detained" Kurtz as a suspected bioterrorist and cordoned off the entire block around his house. (Kurtz walked away the next day on the advice of a lawyer, his "detention" having proved to be illegal.) Over the next few days, dozens of agents in hazmat suits, from a number of law enforcement agencies, sifted through Kurtz's work, analyzing it on-site and impounding computers, manuscripts, books, equipment, and even his wife's body for further analysis. Meanwhile, the Buffalo Health Department condemned his house as a health risk.

Kurtz, a member of the Critical Art Ensemble, makes art which addresses the politics of biotechnology. "Free Range Grains," CAE's latest project, included a mobile DNA extraction laboratory for testing food products for possible transgenic contamination. It was this equipment which triggered the Kafkaesque chain of events.

FBI field and laboratory tests have shown that Kurtz's equipment was not used for any illegal purpose. In fact, it is not even _possible_ to use this equipment for the production or weaponization of dangerous germs. Furthermore, any person in the US may legally obtain and possess such equipment.

"Today, there is no legal way to stop huge corporations from putting genetically altered material in our food," said Defense Fund spokeswoman Carla Mendes. "Yet owning the equipment required to test for the presence of 'Frankenfood' will get you accused of 'terrorism.' You can be illegally detained by shadowy government agents, lose access to your home, work, and belongings, and find that your recently deceased spouse's body has been taken away for 'analysis.'"

Though Kurtz has finally been able to return to his home and recover his wife's body, the FBI has still not returned any of his equipment, computers or manuscripts, nor given any indication of when they will. The
case remains open.

~


Intense. :|]]> Tue, 27 Jul 2004 00:48:00 EDT http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/18351 http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/17664 Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911: Why You Should Say No!

No milk here... Oh Dear.

Move America Forwardnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Mr Moore
]]> Fri, 25 Jun 2004 02:52:00 EDT http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/17664 http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/17659 Principles of Philosophy something happened like that which happens to those who read novels which please and make the same impression as true stories. The novelty of the images of his little particles and vortices are most agreeable. When I read the book... the first time, it seemed to me that everything proceeded perfectly; and when I found some difficulty, I believe it was my fault in not fully understanding his thought... But since then, having discovered in it from time to time things that are obviously false and others that are very improbable, I have rid myself entirely of the prepossession I had conceived and I now find almost nothing in all his physics that I can accept as true...

nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;~ Christiaan Huygens]]> Thu, 24 Jun 2004 19:06:00 EDT http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/17659 http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/17186


5:00pm, November 2003
On Route, Tunis-London

]]> Sat, 05 Jun 2004 23:24:00 EDT http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/17186 http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/17072 Nike pays golfer Tiger Woods more for his sponsorship each year than its entire Indonesian workforce.

~

Sweatshop Free

http://www.fairwear.org.au/

~]]> Sun, 30 May 2004 19:52:00 EDT http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/17072 http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/16667 I am "Developmentally Delayed" - [ Official UN Certification ]



When asked how it was, the Video declined to comment.

~

"You owe me two cents."

~

All the best Rob.

~

"One step ahead of the law-man!"

The Genie reminded me to miss Huss.

~

Sometimes my stoner friends send me ransom videos.
Thanks boys and Girl(s)... and Amy.

~]]> Tue, 18 May 2004 14:49:00 EDT http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/16667 http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/16492 Attached. [ AsYouRequested.zip (41kb) ]

~

Dearest Lord...

~

http://www.oliverwillis.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=2539

~

...please clean up Your mess.

~]]> Thu, 13 May 2004 09:02:00 EDT http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/16492 http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/16149 My mind's mixed links.

http://www.strobes.uklinux.net/124/
http://www.tonylevin.com/pgben03tour-4.htm
http://www.cchr.org/racism/pasa5.htm
http://www.46664.com
http://www.cchr.org/racism/pasa1.htm
http://www.google.com.au/search?=Yihla+Moja+means
http://updates.takingitglobal.org/add

~

"These blond people gave me an insecurity complex."

~

The Assassin and the Tapeworm

~

The Assassin and the Tapeworm.(Dimitri Tsafendas, killer of South African prime minister Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd)

New Statesman, March 27, 2000, by Jon Robins

The killer of Verwoerd, architect of apartheid, remains unhonoured in South Africa even now.

At 2.10pm on 6 September 1966, Dimitri Tsafendas, a parliamentary messenger in South Africa's now defunct Assembly House, crossed the parliament floor, unsheathed a dagger and plunged its blade four times into the chest of the prime minister, Dr Hendrik Verwoerd.

Thus Verwoerd, the so-called "architect of apartheid", was brought to an abrupt and bloody end. Tragically, the despised system of separate development was to survive another three decades. But each successive prime minister-John Vorster, PW Botha and finally F W de Klerk-was forced to dismantle the edifice brick by brick.

There was little grieving for Tsafendas, and there were no elegies honouring his contribution to the fight against apartheid when he was laid to rest last October. The 81-year-old assassin died of pneumonia in a mental institution after spending most of his life on a South African death row.

Fewer than ten people turned up at St Andrew's Greek Orthodox church. It was out of a sense of duty that the local Greek community pitched in to spare the son of a Cretan-born engineer the ignominy of the pauper's grave.

But it could have been a different story. "Displaced person, sailor, Christian, communist, liberation fighter, political prisoner, hero" was the dedication on one wreath. It was from the South African filmmaker Liza Key, who believes that her country's hall of fame to the liberation struggle is one hero short.

Verwoerd's death, like John F Kennedy's assassination three years before, was a moment that defined an era. A generation of South Africans can recall where they were when the news broke of the murder. In the US, there was an outpouring of inconsolable grief for Kennedy, but in South Africa most people were happy to see the back of the old tyrant Verwoerd.

The leader of the liberal Progressive Party at the time, Helen Suzman, the only opposition member in parliament that day, shed no tears. "I thought we were rid of one of the worst scourges we had," she said. She has no doubts that Verwoerd's death changed the course of South African history. She believes that the hated policies of the Verwoerd era wrecked the lives of two generations of blacks, and that their legacy still casts a shadow.

But what of his killer? "The man was a nutcase. He used to say that he had a tapeworm that used to growl every time he passed a cake shop," Suzman says. The story of "Tsafendas and the worm" has reduced the stature of this political assassin to little more than a freakish footnote in the liberation story. According to the legend, the delusional assassin was acting under the command of a giant tapeworm wrapped around his guts. This is the man the people of South Africa remember today - the crazy Greek with no race axe to grind - if they remember him at all.

Judge Beyers pronounced Tsafendas mad at his trial. But his frenzied attack was too reprehensible for psychiatric treatment and too insane for the noose; he was left to rot on death row in Pretoria Central Prison.

In a brutal judgement, Beyers sought to deny the defendant any humanity. "I can as little try a man who has not in the least the makings of a rational mind as I could try a dog or an inert implement. He is a meaningless creature."

Meaningless? Even a cursory analysis of Tsafendas's troubled life serves as a reminder of the damage done in an age when racism was a national obsession put on the statute books.

Tsafendas was born in Mozambique in 1918, the son of a Greek engineer, and moved to the Transvaal at the age of ten. On account of his dark complexion, he was taunted and nicknamed "Blackie". Four years later, when he returned to Mozambique, the Tsafendas family secret was revealed: he was the illegitimate son of a Mozambican woman - and thus "coloured", not "white" as many still believe. He returned to South Africa in 1936 and, a year later, the tapeworm made its first appearance. He complained that it gave him stomach-ache and that he could hear it moving. Two demons - race and madness - began gnawing at his psyche. They would never leave him.

In 1941, he joined the merchant navy and began a bizarre odyssey that was to last almost a quarter of a century. Key, in a submission she made to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission three years ago, tracked this journey. The itinerant Tsafendas picked up odd jobs and settled fleetingly in various countries, but ended up either in psychiatric care or being deported. At one point, he crossed the frozen St Croix river from Canada to the US. On another occasion, he presented himself at the Mandelbaum Gate demanding entry from Israel to Jordan. He spent six months on New York's Ellis Island; received shock treatment in a German asylum; was certified insane in England; baptised on a beach in Greece; received more shock treatment in Germany; and passed through France as a refugee under the auspices of the Red cross.

His moments of madness are chronicled in an inquiry made after the trial. A US psychiatric report in 1946 describes how he complained of voices in radiators and smeared his excrement on the hospital walls. The report is one of many findings of

* schizophrenia. It also reveals his grievances about the race politics of South Africa. Tsafendas was pining for a South African girl-friend, but he feared that their offspring would be black.

Those grievances take on political expression. Allegations of subversive behaviour and flirtations with communism followed him around the world. He was particularly concerned with the fight for independence in his homeland, Mozambique. The inquiry unearthed a startling internal memo from the Mozambican security police. Tsafendas "of mixed blood (a coloured)", it reported, was spotted consorting with "persons of the negro race (blacks)" in a hotel bar.

In 1964, Tsafendas was back in South Africa and -- in spite of mixed parentage, communism and periods of insanity -- landed himself a job as a messenger in the whites-only parliament, within reach of Verwoerd. Shortly before the assassination, he applied for reclassification from "white" to "coloured". Six days after the assassination, Tsafendas told the police that he had killed Verwoerd because he was "so disgusted with the racial policy".

The leaders of the new South Africa remain reluctant to talk about the man who delivered one of the most profound blows against apartheid. Nelson Mandela in his autobiography, A Long Walk to Freedom, deftly sidesteps him. Political assassination is not a strategy that the ANC supports, he wrote. In his memoirs, Mandela does not even name the man who felled the despot, but he describes him as an "obscure white messenger". Again, it is the story of the mad Greek who turned on his own for no reason. Today, neither the Pan-Africanist Congress nor the South African Communist Party acknowledges the man. Indeed, the latter -- in a display of uncomradely pique -- insists that he was never a member, despite evidence that he was.

Songezo Mjongile, a national executive member of the ANC Youth League, says: "We simply note his action as an isolated incident informed by the context in which [the killing] took place." And what was the context? A society that viewed Tsafendas as "this white who is black. . . or a black man in a white skin" which led to the assassin forming his own agenda. Mjongile rules out any suggestion that any form of political conviction inspired Tsafendas's act. Even posthumously, Tsafendas is the outsider, excluded from the liberation movement because his battle was seen as personal rather than political. Mandela ordered him to be moved to the Sterkfontein mental hospital in 1994. But, by then, prison had done a good job in destroying whatever was left of the man's sanity.

Sadistic warders are reported to have urinated in his food, trussed him up in a straitjacket and beat the living daylights out of him. His cell was situated next to a brutal symbol of the old politics of hate: the prison gallows. Three ropes hung over a gate in the floor, and on each rope were tied two nooses to accommodate the regular executions.

The South African-born novelist and painter Henk Van Woerd befriended Tsafendas in the hospital. He avoids the "hero or villain" analysis of Tsafendas, but says that his life was indicative of the trauma that beset South Africa. To dismiss the man as mad is to be unfair both to the man and his deed. The assassination was a rational act in a country gone mad, Van Woerd reckons.

In her A Question of Madness, Key captures Tsafendas talking movingly of a moment of kindness 70 years ago by a fellow pupil defending him from the racial taunts of the headmaster's son. "These blond people gave me an insecurity complex," he remembers.

The tapeworm was there until the end. Tsafendas, in his will, requested a postmortem to decide the issue, but the authorities never honoured his wish.

Now that he is dead, South Africa has found a place for the misfit assassin. Just as Tsafendas resisted being defined under the dehumanising race laws, so he still evades classification today. He was neither black nor white, and neither sane nor totally insane. He was not a freedom fighter and he certainly was not a "meaningless creature". So where do you put him? He was laid to rest in an unmarked grave in Krugersdorp last October.

COPYRIGHT 2000 New Statesman, Ltd.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group

~]]> Sun, 02 May 2004 08:29:00 EDT http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/16149 http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/15009 Julian Burnside QC spoke at my university last night.

If anyone supports the Australian Government's horrific policies regarding Asylum Seekers please post me your credit cards in the mail so I can hit you up style.

Then we can go to Villawood.

Or I can just come over and #### you up?

~

The transcript below was 'lifted' from www.julianburnside.com

~~~

MELBOURNE ROTARY CLUB
16 February 2004

Julian Burnside

Tony Abbott said recently, in connection with the Prime Minister’s revised attitude to parliamentarians’ superannuation, that “It takes real guts to do the right thing in difficult political circumstances”.

He acknowledged implicitly that there can be a difference between what is right and what is convenient, or politically expedient, or electorally popular. Perhaps he also recognised that there are standards of conduct which transcend political manoeuvering.

In Australia, we pride ourselves for our human rights record. Here is a prominent Australian speaking in November 2000:

"I want to talk about the centrality of human rights to our foreign policy objectives, and our decision to make effectiveness the guiding principle of our actions. .

The second reason for our distinctive approach to human rights has more to do with an Australian way of doing things. Our approach is pragmatic but it is also firmly rooted in an ideological commitment to liberal democratic ideals. I believe this blend of the practical and the idealistic very much reflects the character of Australia. A separate public forum could no doubt be dedicated to discussing what core Australian values are - or if they even exist - in the year 2000. Personally, I have no qualms in saying that one of our abiding values is that of a fair go for all.

Australians care about human rights because they believe strongly in a fair go, they support the underdog and they take particular exception to abuses of power. They see justice and human dignity as the self-evident right of all people. They also prefer to cut through the rhetoric and do something useful.."

A fair go for all is probably as close as we, in Australia, get to a shared core value.

In recent times, Australia has been criticised internationally for its treatment of asylum seekers. That criticism says, in effect, that our treatment of asylum seekers falls below what is acceptable by contemporary human rights norms. Australia has brushed off the criticism. But perhaps Tony Abbott’s approach allows a reassessment: is Australia doing what is right, or just what is expedient?

I will make 3 principal points:

What we are doing is needlessly cruel;
What we are doing is largely pointless;
What we are doing is fabulously expensive.


Refugees

Let me turn to the way we treat people who seek asylum in Australia. The Howard government has introduced two policies which are an affront to decency. One a policy of deflection, and the other a policy of detention. We try to stop them from getting here, by taking them from the high seas and locking them up in Nauru, or on Manus Island. If they get here, we lock them up in the Australian desert.

Alexander Downer, in the speech I just referred to, went on to say this:

"… human rights are central to the maintenance of a peaceful world and our nation’s security….

It follows that it is very much in Australia’s interests for government to work out how best to deliver an effective human rights policy. It is also, of course, in the interests of the ordinary people of the world who just want to live their lives free from the fear of poverty, war and tyranny. But I want to emphasise the word effective because this is the litmus test for everything this government does in the human rights field….

This audience will be well acquainted with my view that you do not measure a government’s interest in human rights by the decibel reading of its public criticism of others. You measure it by what it actually does…"

These words ring false today.

The government's recent hard-line stance on the refugee issue is officially justified in the name of our sovereignty. To guard our sovereignty, the government calls boat people “illegals”, and it locks them up.

It is the great lie on which government policy rests. People who come here informally are not illegal. They commit no offence by arriving without papers, without an invitation, seeking protection. They may be locked up for months or years, but our moral conscience is lulled to sleep because we are told they are "illegals".

The fact is that to come to Australia without authority and seek asylum is not an offence against Australian law. There is no provision of the law which says it is an offence to arrive in Australia without permission. Much less is it an offence to arrive in Australia without permission and seek asylum. To the contrary, Article 14 of the Universal Declaration, entered into force on 10 December 1948, guarantees to every human being the right to seek asylum in any territory they can reach. Those who come here trying to exercise that right are locked up in desert camps or, more recently, in remote desert islands.

Indefinite detention
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the most widely accepted international convention in human history. Most countries in the world are parties to it. Article 14 of the universal declaration of human rights provides that every person has a right to seek asylum in any territory to which they can gain access. Despite that universally accepted norm, when a person arrives in Australia without prior permission and seeks asylum, we lock them up. This is so notwithstanding that they have not committed any offence by arriving in Australia without prior permission.

The Migration Act provides for the detention of such people until they are either given a visa or removed from Australia. In practice, this means that human beings – men, women and children, innocent of any crime – are locked up for months, and in many cases years.

They are held in conditions of shocking harshness. The United Nations Human Rights Commission has described conditions in Australia’s detention centres as “offensive to human dignity”. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has described Australia’s detention centres as “worse than prisons” and observed “alarming levels of self-harm”. Furthermore, they have found that the detention of asylum seekers in Australia contravenes Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which forbids arbitrary detention.

The Delegate of the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner who visited Woomera in 2002 described it as “a great human tragedy”. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have repeatedly criticised Australia’s policy of mandatory detention and the conditions in which people are held in detention.

In short, every responsible human rights organisation in the world has condemned Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers. Only the Australian government and the Australian public are untroubled by our treatment of innocent, traumatised people who seek our help.

Mr Ruddock and Mr Howard have made it clear that the mandatory detention system, and the iniquitous Pacific Solution, are designed to “send a message”. This decodes as: we treat innocent people harshly to deter others. The punishment of innocent people to shape the behaviour of others is impossible to justify. It is the philosophy of hostage-takers.


Minister’s website

The Minister’s website says that “Immigration detention is not imprisonment. People can leave immigration detention by leaving Australia”. This is partly misleading, partly a lie.

It is misleading because it obscures what is really being said: you can avoid this form of imprisonment by abandonning your claim to protection; you can get freedom here by returning to persecution in Iraq or Afghanistan. Not such an attractive option. Sophie’s choice.


Lock them up for ever

In many cases it is simply false. Mr al Masri was a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip. He arrived in Australia in June 2001 and was placed in Woomera Detention Centre. He applied for a protection visa, claiming to be a refugee. He was refused a protection visa and asked to be returned to the Gaza Strip. Although Mr al Masri was able to produce a passport, officers of the Department of Immigration were unable to return him, because they could not get permission for his entry to the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians, it seems, thought he was an Israeli spy. Israel, for its part, did not want him. Five months passed and Mr al Masri remained locked up in Woomera. Mr al Masri applied to the court for an order releasing him from detention. Not surprisingly, the government resisted that application.

Here, I need to say something about the constitutional basis for mandatory detention under the Migration Act. The Australian Constitution entrenches the separation of powers. The three powers of governments – legislative, executive and judicial – are vested in the three different arms of government. The powers of one arm of government may not be exercised by another arm of government. Accordingly, the Parliament, established under Chapter I cannot exercise the powers of the executive government which is established under Chapter II. Courts established under Chapter III of the Constitution may not pass laws Punishment is central to the judicial power. Accordingly, only a Chapter III court can inflict punishment on a person. Locking a person up is generally regarded as punishment. However, the High Court has acknowledged that there are circumstances where detention is necessary for the discharge of an executive function. In those limited circumstances detention imposed directly and without the intervention of a Chapter III court will be constitutionally valid. This holds good only as long as the detention goes no further than can reasonably be seen as necessary to the executive purpose which it supports.

The Migration Act requires that all unlawful non-citizens should be detained and should be held in detention until granted a visa or removed from the country. Mr al Masri’s case presented a conundrum: he had been refused a visa but he could not be removed. The question then was: should he remain in detention. For the sake of accuracy, it is worth quoting a portion of the Judgment in al Masri’s case:

“Theoretically at least, detention might continue for the rest of a person’s life and the Solicitor-General did not shrink from that possibility, whilst contending that in the real world such a thing would not happen.”

Put simply, the Solicitor-General, on behalf of the Minister for Immigration, had submitted to the court that, if it came to the point, Mr al Masri could be locked up for the rest of his life, although he is innocent of any offence.


UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention

The following is an extract from the report of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in June 2002. It is lengthy, but its contents should shock anyone who believes that we treat asylum seekers humanely:

“36. Officials publicly reproached the delegation for its concern about this “so-called” syndrome. The delegation insists on its evaluation, corroborated by the report of the JSCFADT which states, “Inside the centres, the strongest memory some Committee members retained was the despair and depression of some of the detainees, their inability to understand why they were being kept in detention in isolated places, in harsh physical conditions with nothing to do” (JSCFADT report, para. 4.238). Recalling the words of one detainee, one of the subtitles of the report is “Immigration detention syndrome”, a term similar to that for which the delegation was reproached (ibid., para. 7.13).

37. In the light of the many testimonies gathered, the delegation can state that the following behavioural anomalies existed: affective regression and infantilism; aggressivity against detainees (at Villawood, an increasing number of quarrels between women were noted); and, above all, acts of self-mutilation going as far as suicide.

38. The delegation also took note of equally alarming information concerning, for example, the case of Palestinian detainees (several suicide attempts); a Syrian man who had to be stitched up after trying to commit hara-kiri; an attempt to hang himself by a 12-year-old child who wanted to go home to his grandparents in Iran; a mother hospitalized for two months during which one of her two children tried to commit suicide and her sister and son-in-law went on hunger strike, he sewing his lips together. In a report submitted to HREOC in May 2002, “Two Australian national policies on self-injury and suicide”, Dr. Michael Dudley, a psychiatrist, mentions specific and concording allegations, including as to the probable date of death, concerning five persons said to have committed suicide (annex I of the study).

39. These observations were generally corroborated by DIMIA statistics: “In the eight months between 1 March 2001 and 30 October 2001 there were 264 incidents of self#8209;harm reported (238 males and 26 females). The rates of self-harm are appallingly high for people in the 26-35 age range: 116 people (105 men and 11 women). They were followed by those people entering their adulthood aged 20-25 years, of whom 103 had self#8209;harmed (98 males and 5 females). Twenty-nine children and young people up to the age of 20 were recorded as having self#8209;harmed.” Following its interviews with detainees, the delegation was able to compile a list of the following acts of self-harm, some of which were witnessed personally:

(a) Corporal lacerations by jumping onto the razor wire (witnessed by the delegation) or by stealing sharp implements to lacerate arms or legs. The delegation was informed of the case of a detainee who cut the word “freedom” into his arm;

(b) Lips sewn together (two cases during the visit);

(c) Hitting of the head against walls or objects such as air conditioning units;

(d) Suicide or attempts by hanging, jumping off buildings or trees (the case of an Afghan whom the delegation met in Perth), taking an overdose of medicine, and poisoning by drinking shampoo, detergent, fly spray or other toxic liquids.

40. Following the exchange of views that the delegation had on this subject with the Immigration and Detention Advisory Group (IDAG) charged with advising the Minister, and in the light of the testimonies gathered and the reports submitted by NGOs, the delegation considers that the two following factors play a preponderant role:

(a) On the one hand, the wracking uncertainty, day after day, in which the detainees live concerning the length of their detention which, contrary to common-law prisoners, is without legal limit (see paragraphs 16 ff);

(b) On the other hand, the inadequate information provided on the status of the application at whatever stage, or the difficulty in obtaining information on the frequent problems encountered during the investigation of the application (see paragraphs 20 ff).

41. This absence of temporal reference points foments collective turmoil, each person trying to find out the status of everyone else’s case, which breeds jealousy and frustration; in the absence of sufficient information, the granting of visas is often compared to a lottery. “We are suspended in time”, says one detainee; “We live in limbo”, says a mother.

42. Among other stress factors observed, the delegation notes in particular:

(a) The constant “eye” of the surveillance camera (detainees say, “We are totally robbed of privacy”; “We no longer have any control over our lives”);

(b) The too-frequent practice of handcuffing, using disposable plastic flexcuffs, of detainees for trips outside the centre, in particular for dental or medical treatment; the detainees say they feel like criminals;

(c) The frequent roll calls (four per day on average, including one at night by counting heads in the bedrooms and dormitories). On this point, the observations of the delegation were corroborated by the JSCFADT report which cites “a number of complaints about the waking of detainees during nightly checks of sleeping accommodations” (para. 6.87);

(d) Autistic reactions provoked by the difficulties encountered by some detainees in making their needs known because of language problems that are so diverse that it has been impossible for ACM to deal with them, despite its efforts. This problem is particularly acute for women who, in the absence of an adequate number of female interpreters, are reluctant to discuss their private problems;

(e) The routine calling for detainees over the public address system using their registration number, composed of three letters and a number. According to an NGO that had provided toys for Christmas, the children were called up to receive their gifts using their registration numbers. The delegation also observed that most of the detainees who came forward introduced themselves by their registration numbers. At bottom, this practice is felt to be a loss of the detainees’ identity.”


Solitary confinement

Officially, solitary confinement is not used in Australia’s detention system. Officially, recalcitrant detainees are placed in the Management Unit. The truth is that the Management Unit at Baxter is solitary confinement bordering on total sensory deprivation. I have viewed a video tape of one of the Management Unit cells. It shows a cell about 3 ½ metres square, with a matress on the floor. There is no other furniture; the walls are bare. A doorway, with no door, leads into a tiny bathroom. The cell has no view outside; it is never dark. The occupant has nothing to read, no writing materials, no TV or radio; no company yet no privacy because a video camera observes and records everything, 24 hours a day. The detainee is kept in the cell 23 ½ hours a day. For half an hour a day he is allowed into a small exercise area where he can see the sky.

No court has found him guilty of any offence; no court has ordered that he be held this way. The government insists that no court has power to interfere in the manner of detention.


Border protection

‘Protection’ implies a threat. I do not need to be protected from something which does not threaten me: I do not need to be protected from dinner with friends or a holiday at the beach. The language of border protection became standard when the Tampa rescued 433 asylum seekers in August 2001, and brought them into the waters off Christmas Island. They were mostly Afghans fleeing the Taleban. There is no need to remind people of the Taleban’s malevolence. Women who dared appear in public unaccompanied by a male relative were taken into the Kabul sportsground an summarily shot. Women and girls fleeing the Taleban in early 2001 were the most obvious candidates for refugee status. How could it be said that they were a threat to us. They needed our help. We turned them away and sent them to Nauru at vast expense to the Australian taxpayer. By doing so, we did not in any sense protect our borders: we simply showed the world that, in Australia, electoral oppportunism and selfishness trump humanitarian imperatives and decency.


The numbers

It’s useful also to put this in context, given the rhetoric that surrounds it. Every year 4.7 million people visit Australia, short term visits for holidays or business. Every year 110,000 people migrate permanently to live in this country. Every year - until the time of Tampa at least - there were on average 1000 people who arrived without authority and sought asylum and of them approximately 900 in every thousand were found to have proper grounds for refugee status. The highest number of unauthorised arrivals in one year was just over 4000: most of them fleeing the Taliban or Saddam Hussein.

The ones we lock up are not the 55,000 who overstay their visas and simply remain in the country without permission. The ones we lock up are the 1000 or so each year who would come, of whom 900 turned out to be genuine refugees - already damaged and traumatised by the circumstances which bring them here. They’re the ones we’re locking up. Who can provide a rational justification for that approach to the problem?

Let us put these numbers in a more manageable context. If we divide all the numbers by 40, it looks like this: imagine the MCG filled with a capacity crowd: just on 120,000 people. That represents the number of people who arrive in Australia each year. Most of them will leave again. 1300 of them will stay on after the game: they are the visa overstayers. Just one hundred of them were unauthorised arrivals, but 90 of them are genuine refugees who will eventually get protection visas. We lock up the 100. We torment them; we encrease the damage they have already suffered. This is said to protect our borders.

Of course it got worse after Tampa. And don’t forget, Tampa was before September 11. It’s very easy to telescope history, especially with the magnitude of the events of September 11. The judgement of Justice North at first instance in the federal court was given at 2.15 pm EST on September 11, 2001: nine hours before the planes hit the twin towers in New York. There was no suggestion that the Tampa standoff had anything to do with terrorism. To the contrary, we knew that the people on the deck of the Tampa, rescued from the sinking Palapa on 26 August, were fleeing the Taliban, a regime so terrible that, only weeks after September 11, we helped America march in and bomb them back to the Stone Age.

In the wake of Tampa we introduced the Pacific Solution. The Pacific Solution involves intercepting people before they manage to get to the mainland and taking them against their will to either Manus Island (to the north of Port Moresby) or to Nauru in the central Pacific. The detention of people in those places is indistinguishable from the detention of people in Guantanamo Bay but for this difference: the people being held in Guantanamo Bay are suspected of serious offences. Whether the suspicions are well founded is another matter, but they’re suspected of involvement in serious offences. The people who are detained, equally isolated, equally denied access to legal help, equally abandoned by every country in the world, those people in Nauru and Manus Island are not suspected of any offence whatever, except it could be an offence to try to save your own life when fleeing Saddam Hussein or the Taliban.


Fatimeh

Fatimeh (not her real name) arrived in Australia from Iran in mid-1999. She converted to Christianity in early 2000, and began preaching against Islam. She was baptised in August 2000, after the Department of Immigration lifted its ban on baptism in detention. In late August, Hussein (not his real name) an Iranian man held in the same detention camp, left Australia voluntarily and returned to Iran. Hussein informed on Fatimeh. Her family in Iran contacted her to tell her she was in great danger if she returned to Iran. Preaching against Islam is a serious offence in Iran. If she returned she faced the prospect of being stoned to death.

I have seen an official video tape of two women being stoned to death. They are brought out wrapped from head to foot in some kind of shroud. Thy are placed in holes which are about 3 feet deep. The dirt is shovelled in around them, so that their bodies are buried to waist level. They are then bombarded with medium sized stones from all sides. They cannot flinch in anticipation, because they cannot see. They flinch after each blow. Gradually blood begins to seep through the shroud; their bodies start to sag forward. Eventually they collapse completely, and their bloodied skulls are clearly visible through the torn material. They are dragged out of the holes and are carried away.

A central fact in Fatimeh’s claim for asylum was that Hussein had returned to Iran and informed on her. Five witnesses gave evidence that Hussein had been in the camp at the relevant time, and that he had taken some of Fatimeh's writings with him when he returned to Iran. No witness contradicted that evidence. Fatimeh told the RRT Hussein's camp number and his boat number. She asked the RRT to check on Hussein to dispel any doubt about this part of her claim.

The RRT found, as a fact, that Hussein did not exist. The tribunal member found, as a fact, that Hussein's existence had been fabricated by Fatimeh and her witnesses in order to fortify her claim for asylum.

When the case came to be reviewed in Court, a subpoena to the Department produced documents which showed not only that Hussein existed, but that he had been in the camp exactly when Fatimeh said he had, and that he left for Iran exactly when she said he had.

The tribunal member had not even bothered to ask the Department whether they had a record of Hussein. That casual indifference would very likely have led to Fatimeh's death. When the decision came on for review in court, the Department argued that the decision should not be overturned. It appeared not to trouble the RRT or the Department that, if Fatimeh were returned to Iran, she would almost certainly be stoned to death.


Mandatory detention is a moral wrong

I believe indefinite mandatory detention is wrong. Why is it wrong? The essentials of what we’re doing are as follows: we take innocent human beings and we lock them up and treat them harshly and this is done to deter other people from following in their footsteps.

Infliction of harm on innocent human beings to influence the conduct of others is indistinguishable from what hostage takers do. It’s the sort of thing that we would attack terrorists for doing; and yet we do it in the name of “border protection”.

Why is it wrong to punish innocent people? Punishing guilty people, people who have been convicted - punishing them for the sake of deterrence - is perfectly orthodox. Why can’t you punish innocent people to influence the conduct of others? Well I would rely on two sources, the complicated one is Kant’s Categorical Imperative which says you should so conduct yourself that you would wish that your conduct became the universal rule for the conduct of others. And one of the outworkings of that is that you cannot use a human being as an instrument to the achievement of another objective. What mandatory detention does is to instrumentalise innocent human beings.

Kant is brilliant but almost unreadable. The Christian Bible said it much more simply. It said you should do unto others, as you would wish they would do unto you. It’s what our mothers teach us when we’re small: How would the world be if everyone behaved like that? That’s Kant simplified for children. It seems to me plainly right.

I cannot think of any worthwhile moral framework which makes it right to punish innocent people in order to influence the conduct of others.

Mandatory detention is a crime against humanity
In 2002, along with more than 80 other nations, Australia acceded to the Rome statute by which the International Criminal Court was created. The court is the first permanent court ever established with jurisdiction to try war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of genocide regardless of the nationality of the perpetrators and regardless of the place where the offences occurred.

As part of the process of implementing the International Criminal Court regime, Australia has introduced into its own domestic law a series of offences which mirror precisely the offences over which the International Criminal Court has jurisdiction. So, for the first time since Federation, the Commonwealth of Australia now recognises genocide as a crime and now recognises various war crimes.

The Australian Criminal Code also recognises various acts as constituting crimes against humanity. One of them is of particular significance in the present context. It is as follows:

"268.12 Crime against humanity - imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty

(1) A person (the perpetrator) commits an offence if:

(a) the perpetrator imprisons one or more persons or otherwise severely deprives one or more persons of physical liberty; and

(b) the perpetrator's conduct violates article 9, 14 or 15 of the Covenant; and

(c) the perpetrator's conduct is committed intentionally or knowingly as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population.

Penalty: Imprisonment for 17 years.

(The Covenant referred to is the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the ICCPR.)

The elements of these offences are relatively simple:

The perpetrator imprisons one or more persons;
That conduct violates Article 9 of the ICCPR;
The conduct is committed knowingly as part of a systematic attack directed against a civilian population.
Australia's system of mandatory, indefinite detention appears to satisfy each of the elements of that crime. We imprison asylum seekers. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has found that the system violates Article 9 of the ICCPR. This conduct is intentional, and is part of a systematic attack directed against those who arrive in Australia without papers and seek asylum.

If moral arguments have no purchase, it remains the fact that our government is engaged in a continuing crime against humanity when assessed against its own legislative standards.

I accuse Mr Howard and Mr Ruddock of that crime. I accuse Senator Vanstone of that crime. I expect that they will ignore this accusation, since the only person who can bring charges is the Attorney General of the Commonwealth.


The cost

Is it possible to do any worse by these people? As a matter of fact, the government has a way to add salt to the wound. After the damage that is inflicted on these people, when they are released from detention, they get a bill for the cost of being held. I have in my Chambers one example of this in which the man is told the conditions of his release are that he must not work and he must make immediate arrangements to pay the sum of $214,000 for his stay in Port Hedland and Woomera. The going rate is about $120-$140 per day per person. We do it presumably to make them feel even more hopeless than we have managed to make them feel in their months or years of detention.

The cost of the Pacific Solution is much greater. Over the last two years the Pacific solution has prevented a about 1500 asylum seekers from getting to Australia. It has cost us about $1000 million. We could have bought each of them a house in Adelaide or Brisbane for what it has cost us to dump them on Nauru, and we would have created a lot of goodwill by doing so. We would have created local jobs by doing so. Instead, by doing what we have done, we have simply destroyed their hope and their lives.


Choices

It is interesting to reflect that if Australia were geographically eligible for membership of the European Union, we would be disqualified on human rights grounds. We would be disqualified at the threshold because our treatment of Asylum seekers breaches the standards imposed by the European Union. Not a very proud record for a country which looks for Europe, and Britain particularly, for our cultural origins and norms. We simply fail their test of what is decent treatment of human beings.

If the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were being debated now, Australia would oppose it. Howard would prefer to avoid interference from the international community, just as Mr Ruddock would prefer to avoid interference from the Courts.

We have fallen a long way. We have squandered the legacy of our past. Our Prime Minister, who regards himself as walking in the footsteps of Robert Menzies and calls himself a Christian, is in fact immoral, hypocritical, un-Christian and – as a proponent of mandatory detention - a criminal. He must take personal responsibility for the Pacific Solution, which is a the most disgraceful and cynical enterprise ever undertaken by an Australian government.

Mr Ruddock clings to his membership of Amnesty International, in the face of sustained criticism from that organisation; he chants the Liberal mantra of family values whilst locking families of innocent people behind a 9000 volt “courtesy fence” at Baxter. He pretends to be a Christian, while the leaders of all the Christian churches in Australia condemn him for his policies. He is responsible for instructing counsel to argue that we do not have solitary confinement in detention centres, but if we do the Courts must not interfere; that we must send terrified people back to torture or death; that we can lock them up for the rest of their lives if need be.

For their hypocrisy, as much as for their cruelty, the Howard government deserve our contempt.

In the epilogue to his 6-volume History of Australia, Manning Clark wrote:

“This generation has a chance to be wiser than previous generations. They can make their own history. With the end of the domination by the straiteners, the enlargers of life now have their chance. They have the chance to lavish on each other the love the previous generations had given to God, and to bestow on the here and now the hopes and dreams they had once entertained for some future human harmony. It is the task of the historian and the myth-maker to tell the story of how the world came to be as it is. It is the task of the prophet to tell the story of what might be. The historian presents the choice: history is a book of wisdom for those making that choice.”

Australia has made a choice with terrible consequences. We have chosen a government which shows contempt for human rights, whilst posturing as champions of decency and family values; a government of hypocrites whose dishonesty has made us relaxed and comfortable only by anaesthetising the national conscience.

In her latest novel, The Prosperous Thief, Andrea Goldsmith says of Germany in the 1930s: “The Government was a meticulous launderer of the public memory”. I live in hope that, at the next Federal election, the Australian public will recover its memory of the days of Chifley or Menzies, its memory of the days when the idea of a fair go meant something, the days when decent treatment of other human beings was more important than blind pursuit of self-interest. If that happens, even for a moment, the Howard government will lose office and we will have a chance to return to the values which truly mark Australia as a great nation.

END

More at www.julianburnside.com

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...If that doesn't make you sick, then you are sick.

Yes. Exactly.

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Oh and guess who's Attorney General now...

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]]> Sat, 20 Mar 2004 10:25:00 EST http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/15009 http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/14904 I just got my macro lenses in the mail so here is me being pretentious and macro.

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"White Man." - Jarra McGrath, 2004]]> Wed, 17 Mar 2004 08:19:00 EST http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/14904 http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/14554 I'd like to share my second entry in the DPChallenge photography competitions. This week's theme was "Silence".

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"Hunger to be heard." - Jarra McGrath, 2004

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Congratulations Peter Jackson and Team!

Congratulations New Zealand!

Alright!

:)

]]> Mon, 01 Mar 2004 06:44:00 EST http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/14554 http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/14516

...is this a 'dimply'?

]]> Fri, 27 Feb 2004 22:36:00 EST http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/14516 http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/14447 "Did you see the pool?"...


]]> Tue, 24 Feb 2004 20:38:00 EST http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/14447 http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/14386 I joined a digital photography community yesterday. I shot and entered my first submission in their online competition under the theme "conflict".

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"On all our houses." - Jarra McGrath, 2004

]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2004 00:19:00 EST http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/14386 http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/14348

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"... and justice for all."]]> Sat, 21 Feb 2004 02:09:00 EST http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/14348 http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/13896 "bowlin, bowlin bowlin.
nbsp;bowlin, bowlin bowlin.
nbsp;bowlin, we wanna go bowlin.
nbsp;bowlin, bowlin bowlin."
nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;- Spoonpheda

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Style.







Grace.





Speed.





Balance.





Gravity.


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Hardcore.

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mooooo-ore

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]]> Sat, 31 Jan 2004 20:01:00 EST http://Jarra.tigblog.org/post/13896