While ASIO routinely over-reached in its early years in its spying on various activists, it seems (at least in terms of what’s come to light) that some of the worst examples of “secret police” surveillance of community organizations has come from state “Special Branches” and their successors. In Victoria, for instance, the Operations Intelligence Unit spied on all manner of people and groups, notably including one Peter Garrett. Well, it seems like the tradition continues. The Age has a long article about an undercover cop spying on a variety of groups, including Animal Liberation, Socialist Alternative (RM:Corrected), and – get this – the organizing committee for the Palm Sunday March!
As the article reports, Animal Liberation were breaking the law to conduct “open rescues”:
Despite the doubts, Andrew remained active enough to be part of a midnight raid on a battery hen farm at Wallan in June. The raid, or “open rescue” as the animal activists call it, saved 14 hens from a cruel death in excrement pits – which have no food or water – beneath their cages.
Andrew played an important role. He dived into the excrement pit and saved several hens, including one given the name Martha, who weighed only 400 grams instead of a healthy 1.8 kilograms.
Yes, they were breaking and entering. But, if this was the worst that Animal Liberation was getting up to, at the very least this is a huge waste of police resources.
If activist groups show signs of planning serious crimes, that is of course an appropriate target for police investigation. Whichever government organization was responsible for getting an undercover officer in with Benbrika’s hotheads was clearly doing the right thing by doing so. But despite the claims by the Victoria Police that the bad old days are over, these examples smell a little like the police playing at being spies on largely harmless groups for no particularly good reason. And, to give Red Ted Baillieu credit, he’s actually demonstrated some small-l liberal credentials by at least asking what safeguards are in place to prevent inappropriate surveillance.
So, own up, LP readers. Which one of you is the undercover cop?
I remember the Premier of South Australia going to Police H.Q. in the early seventy’s asking to see the file the “Special Branch” had been keeping on him.
I remember it well, the Police were mortified that the Premier of the state had the unmitigated gall to ask to see it.Incidentally at the time, they initially denied its existence.
Actually, (and as far as we know, anyway) the Socialist Alliance (broad, nationwide, alliance of various socialist groups and individuals, including students, migrants, old lefties, and revolutionaries) wasn’t infiltrated – Socialist Alternative (smaller, ideologically homogeneous revolutionary group mostly made up of academics and students, mostly in Melbourne) was.
Thanks for the correction, Wombo.
“So, own up, LP readers. Which one of you is the undercover cop?”
I’m betting on BBB!
)
Didn’t Osama bin Laden begin his career of frightfulness by saving chickens?
Now those very chickens wear tiny explosives belts under their feathers.
You can’t be too careful.
Robert and All:
Aaahh. Now it becomes clear. I was wondering why an organization devoted to protecting the national interests and our security had not inflitrated organizations in the financial world and so warned us of the grave threats that would hit us like a ton of bricks when the Meltdown/Depression broke out.
They were busy elsewhere.
Maybe it’s time they had a review of their functions and especially their priorities.
The Special Branch in SA had a really nasty reputation in the late 60s and 70s. (They were notorious for supplying all the anti-war marches with agents provocateur.) Don Dunstan wouldn’t have been the only polititian with a file, either.
I’m sure I had one, and I’d be surprised if it weren’t still in existence.
Special Branch in Brisbane took a particular interest in the Labor Day March. It was fun to play ‘spot the photographer’ occupying various vantage points along the route.
It supposedly ended with the election of the Goss government in 1989 but probably just went under deeper cover.
“The Special Branch in SA had a really nasty reputation in the late 60s and 70s. (They were notorious for supplying all the anti-war marches with agents provocateur.) Don Dunstan wouldn’t have been the only polititian with a file, either.”
No he wasn’t.However most of the politicians they kept files on were of a left bent, but special attention was given to union leaders and the homo sexual community.I do remember one right wing numb nut known member of the Liberal Party, who was a homo sexual had a file, of course he was mortified when it all came out “Police keeping files on the Adelaide establishment” how dare they, he was supposed to be one of the un-touchables.
Of course these were the times John Howard romanced about, when you left money out for the milkman, the white picket fences, and the Police being able to persecute the homo’s,union members,and others who didn’t quite fit into their cute fantasy land.
It is probably still happening,even easier for them now I guess, just ring up the internet provider and your on the list.
Isn’t it great!:
Modern Liberalism = Liberty for the financial/economic realm of society but not so much for the political/ideological realm
Same here, David.
Someone up here had an ASIO file party the other week. Good times.
I loved the bit in this story where a police intelligence unit officer used his covert identity, once he had left the force, to work for large uranium miners to infiltrate perceived threatening activist groups.
It does not get much more tacky than that but probably does provide an indication of whose special interests are uppermost in Victorian policing work.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/former-officer-hired-to-spy-20081016-52e3.html?page=1
I reckon it is Adrien.
The ASIO agents were always really weird – and thick. So not referring to their wedding tackle. Take the bloke who tried to recruit me at a public sector union delegate course. What an inarticulate verbose loon. I’m still not sure that his confused, hours-long, post-prandial, unmistakably counter-revolutionary pitch was not the involuntary excrescence of a simple prankster.
Tee hee! They probably think the Palm Sunday march is organised by a gay action group.
“I’m betting on BBB!
)”
I came here to register my disgust (feigned, of course), and I find myself outed! Right you are, clarencegirl. Unfortunately (for you), perceptiveness of this kind must be punished. A file has been created and you’ve been added to countless watchlists. Hope you didn’t have any overseas holiday plans.
BBB
No, it’s me!!
BBB is faking it. He has some nefarious plans, no doubt. Beware the spy or provocateur who cheerfully admits his identity.
But clarencegirl, you are now on watchlists because you have wrongly identified an individual we were hoping to recruit. You have wasted police time. Be alert and alarmed. We’ll be seeing you.
It ain’t me, and I’ll take Mandy Rice-Davies for $1000, Alex.
Jesus, BBB, you’re with a Federal agency?
For Christ’s sake, I thought it had been decided, once and for all, by the Inter-Departmental Web Log Intelligence Committee, that monitoring LP would be a State responsibility.
Haven’t you read IDWLIC Memorandum 481/2006? It was agreed that only significant, influential left-wing blogs would be infiltrated by Federal agents. The weak, second-rate ones would be left to State intel units like mine.
So I should be the only covert operative here.
Bloody Feds!
Tis a shame that particular undercover officer was outed or he may have prevented the needless suffering that followed when some Greenpeace activists invaded Lucas Heights in late 2001. A number of patients dying from bone cancer went without their pain relief that Christmas thanks to that particular action.
Are you sure about that, Rufus? I don’t share the idiotic anti-nuclear phobia of Greenpeace, but that seems a surprising outcome. Even if Lucas Heights operations were interfered with, couldn’t medical isotopes be obtained from international sources?
Paulus
If the interruption had been known about in advance, imports might have been arranged, but it was not possible to get this particular drug, called Quadramet at short notice in late 2001. Patients a long way from Sydney were worst affected, because the delay made the short-lived isotopes ineffective. Patients in WA and Tasmania suffered badly, and it was never reported.
I know because I worked for ANSTO at the time.
Paulus, COAG negotiations are proceeding and fully costing a shared State-Federal agreement on LP watching duties.
You can figure it out between you, I’m sure, but you better make sure you brief the right people. And fail to brief the right people. IYKWIMAITYD.
I attended a couple of NORML marches in Adelaide in the early 80s. We cheerfully posed for the numerous photographers on the periphery, toking on enormous fake joints. Unfortunately, my father worked in a Government photo lab, and he busted me as a pot smoker when my image appeared in his developing tank.
I don’t think I’d dive into a pit of chicken shit to save a stricken chook, though I no longer eat them. Fifty trucks a day, each loaded with a thousand pullets enjoying their first and last excursion, thunders past the end of my street, on their way to the local Steggles slaughter house. Watch the Italian movie from the late 70s, ‘Panna e Cicocolado’ (Bread and Chocolate) and you’ll never eat chicken again either.
By the way Rufus, it’s unlikely any cancer patients went without pain relief, as you claim. Granted, they may have missed out on their cancer treatment, but that is not pain relief. Au contraire. There would have been no shortage of morphine, derived from the completely non-radioactive papaver somniferum.
Rufus: FWIW, I think Greenpeace are religious publicity-seeking prats a lot of the time, and if your story is correct I’d agree that the individuals involved should have been prosecuted in a blaze of publicity. But, in general, they’re a noisy nuisance, no more.
Incidentally, Rufus is quite right about the pain relief part, if supplies were indeed disrupted – Quadramet is a radioactive isotope, and it is used for pain relief for cancer sufferers.
Everyone:
Delving way back into ancient history when the Vietnam Veterans’ Action Association started up in response to the Agent Orange cover-up scandal …. the VVAA was rumoured to be a Communist-front organization full of fake veterans who had bought their medals in pawn-shops. It was all pretty vicious stuff – and all of it downright slanderous and untrue.
A terribly “careless” Special Branch bloke just happened to let slip in conversation certain things that could ONLY have come from politically-ordered covert surveillance of VVAA activities and from nowhere else at all. A word to the wise was sufficient – and so those involved with VVAA were afterwards much more careful about what they said in private.
Special Branch might have done some awful things …. but in that particular case, there was at least one Special Branch officer who could see through the hypocrisy and the injustice of what they were ordered to do …. against an amateurish, very poorly resourced, small group of patriotic Australians who should have been given medical treatment by the Dept. of Veterans’ Affairs for their war-caused disorders and were forced to take public and legal action when they were callously and dishonestly denied their entitlement to that medical treatment.
Operative Ozymandias: “I don’t think I’d dive into a pit of chicken shit to save a stricken chook,…” please note from monthly briefing paper IDWLIC 08/06 that the term currently favoured amongst left activists is “stricken chicken”.
You will blow your cover if you persist in using variant terminology.
Accrding to the current EBA in IDWLIC, your pay may be docked by $3.46 (inclusive of GST) for each further detected breach. Word to the wise. Alert, never alarmist.
Ozy
You are correct in saying morphine was available, but it basically knocked them out for their last Christmas rather than giving them some quality time with their family.
It’s history now, but the point is that not all activism is harmless.
Ozymandias, that is such an Adelaide story! I had surgery a few years back, at a time when my sister was working nights in a pathology lab. When she came in to see me the morning after the surgery I was excitedly telling her all about what the surgeon had said about my condition and she just smiled a little smile and said ‘Yes, I know.’ She’d been typing up the report the night before.
Who needs Special Branch when you’ve got one degree of separation?
I’m sure somebody’s monitoring my e-mails. In fact my entire computer. For all I know they’ve fitted video surveillance equipment in my smoke alarm and are also tapping my phones. Sometimes they even slow my computer boot-up time.I also discovered a nonoscopic camera in my McCain’s roast chicken instant dinner, and in a pizza sent bt Dominos. On both occasions I was watching that dangerously subversive pommie sho, Dr. Who.
But the real question is, Who watches Ratty nowadays?
Doing the “Eclectic Parrot” radio program on Triple R during the 80s, we used to be transcribed by all the corporate services, which was then passed on to most of the ASX top 200 who were subscribers. Those who used to do some of the transcribing let us know who and what.
Because it was all volunteer run, there were a number of “ex cops” volunteering, presumably to salve their consciences, or so they said. Usually the benefit of the doubt was given, but just because we know they were out to get us …
Bob Macdonald held the notorious “nude meeting” to ensure that no-one was wired. Think Lucien Freud.
“But the real question is, Who watches Ratty nowadays?”
The men in pajamas.(via Grodscorp)
http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=page&page-id=83
Apparently he was thrown out of office by teh left wing media.
I find it quite amusing that lefties will go to every possible length of the law to defend the actions of protestors. If the police bend the rules even slightly, they raise hell.
However, when “protestors” are quite clearly proven to be breaking the law, they immediately move for a motion of “boys will be boys”.
This is just one example, another good one was the prominent vandalism of the Opera House a few years back.
Rufus is quite correct. A close relative was one of those affected. Morphine was offered (which just zonks people out) but a second relative whose name I do not know made up a Brompton’s Cocktail. Illegal of course (thanks to despicable curs like Fred Nile), but the person involved had a great final Christmas.
After things like that, the WTO “peaceful protest” riots and so forth, I’d be startled if various “peace” groups were not being infiltrated. Amazing how many “peace” groups and nutters like “animal liberation” types resort so quickly to violence.
MarkL
Canberra
So Ratty now makes his living telling war stories to RWDBs. Amazing.
I find amusing that so-called libertarians who preach the need for freedom from oppressive government will go to every possible length to defend the use of pretty oppressive government behaviour, such using the police infiltrators to assist in what appears to be some sort of crusade to shut down an animal rights group.
Of course libertarians are pretty near universally only concerned about their own liberty, and the liberty of other species be damned.
To the rest of us, it’s not so obvious that the animal liberationists are committing a worse crime than farmers who utilise various battery-farming techniques of a pretty sordid nature.
Gandhians would like nothing more than to be chucked into the slammer, punished for a good cause.
But if these protestors are to be chucked into the slammer, perhaps they could share a cell with some bankers, whose recent vandalism has been much, much more expensive.
BTW, my initial reaction to the reported version of what was apparently going on at the battery farms in question was a certain degree of skepticism – but the pictures they have up at http://www.animalliberation.com.au/otherorg/action/barnlaid.htm are pretty damning.
Sorry, but anyone who thinks these guys are the ones that need police monitoring has got their priorities truly screwed up. When they start using police to monitor battery farms to ensure humane treatment of animals, I’ll be satisfied my taxpayer dollars are being well spent.
Excrement Pit Diver and the Stricken Chickens
… if I ever start a rock band, that’s what it’s gonna be called.
“I find it quite amusing that lefties will go to every possible length of the law to defend the actions of protestors. If the police bend the rules even slightly, they raise hell.”
I wonder who is calling the kettle black here?
I remember a certain Yobbo raising merry hell, when he had his collar felt by Mr Plod.
Rufus, just interested – but how did a few hours of protesting by Greenpeace stop production for a week? The head of ANTSO was quoted as saying at the time:
I’m not sure how long it took the police to round up the Greenpeace protesters from the site on that day (two-three hours?) but surely even half a day’s interruption to production could have been made up, and other later flights etc. used for distribution?
The protest was on Dec 18 – a whole week before Xmas – so why not run an extra long shift the next day and the next etc?
Having not worked in a nuclear reactor you maybe able to fill in the gaps.
And I also would have thought this is exactly the sort of story which would have made the news, or are you suggesting that News Ltd for instance, knew but passed on it, which seems a wee bit odd.
Word, wiz.
Jinmaroo – I reckon it is Adrien.
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Really are you serious? That’s a little beyond a joke y’know. I’d appreciate an apology.
.
The article in The Age was hardly surprising. States routinely monitor any and all groups that potentially threaten either them or the money-go-round. Usually said threats are absurd but anyone’s who’s read Le Carre hardly finds the proposition that paranoid self-fulfilling prophecies are an espiocrat’s stock-in-trade too great a shock.
.
Y’know the Trot stalls: sign the petition – get the troops out of Iraq, support gay marriage, dance in a circle and sing kumbayah etc. Those petitions are one of biggest sources of dissident databanks the security services have. And it’s free. They don’t even have to pay a Trot mole to deliver ‘em. The dumb fucks do it all on their own initiative.
.
When I pointed this out to one of them he scoffed – “We’re not that important” he said. No. And ASIO/Special Branch are there to ensure that you never become so.
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BTW – Jinmaroo I was, for a time, a person of interest to a Special Branch. You wanna spot a mole – it’s someone who’ll sing the Party Song without the least bit of heresy. Only sometimes they don’t know all the words. Why would a spy make himself or herself known on a site s/he can monitor without detection?
“I find it quite amusing that lefties will go to every possible length of the law to defend the actions of protestors. If the police bend the rules even slightly, they raise hell.
However, when “protestors” are quite clearly proven to be breaking the law, they immediately move for a motion of “boys will be boys”.
This is just one example, another good one was the prominent vandalism of the Opera House a few years back.”
Perhaps, but the “vandalism” of the Opera House was defended (unsuccessfully) on the grounds that it was intended to prevent a greater harm.
This argument was recently successful in the UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/10/activists.carbonemissions
It’s important to remember that law is only form. Content is (generally) determined by the fluctuating balance of forces in society…
“Perhaps, but the “vandalism” of the Opera House was defended (unsuccessfully) on the grounds that it was intended to prevent a greater harm.”
The more groups like “Sea Sheppard” break the law, the more of my money they will receive.
The ranks of most activists groups would be severely depleted if dickheads, dopes and spies were to cease contributing. For myself – to paraphrase an Age letter writer – “If we could get more conscientious note takers and minute writers, as our alleged spy was, most activist groups would not only welcome them with open arms, but actively recruit them with free beer”
Yobbo @ 35, I would like to know why B&E at a chook farm is so important a crime that the group responsible needs to be infiltrated. Are there so many Animal Libbers that it’s hard to know who’s responsible? Why should so much money (and infiltration must cost a lot more than wiretapping!) be spent to protect the interests of battery farmers rather than to solve home burglaries?
“I was, for a time, a person of interest to a Special Branch.”
Out of curiosity, how did you know that, Adrien?
People who think they might be under investigation, often don’t realise just how limited the resources of intelligence agencies actually are. The old Special Branches, and their modern-day equivalents, were and are tiny outfits. ASIO is comparatively much bigger, but still very small compared in % terms to the Australian population.
Allow me to quote Paulus’ Law of Secret Intelligence (which I just made up): 99.9% of people who think they are of interest to an intelligence agency, have never done anything in their lives, and will never do anything, to make themselves of any interest whatsoever.
Example: Jinmaro’s little tale above of what appeared to her to be an attempted recruitment by ASIO. Jinmaro is either in the 0.1% of people who are an exception to Paulus’ Law, or she is just a loon. Out of politeness, I will not express an opinion on which I think is the more likely.
,” I would like to know why B&E at a chook farm is so important a crime”
Because life with out Bacon and EGGS would be intolerable.
C. Dickens summed up my finest moment: “It is a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done.”
Paulus: are you scoffing sir? The Directorate takes quite a dim view of scoffers, to tell the truth. Your case will therefore receive extra attention. We assume you are aware that your every movement is monitored. As are the motions of the chickens.
Rest assured, good citizens, that your futures are safe.
Your bank deposits and mortgages? Well, that’s another story. Move along please, nothing to see here.
Everyone:
If we are to be protected against very real threats from organized crime and from terrorists then OUR [not foreign!!] security and intelligence organizations do need accurate information about social groups, their aims and their broad activities and, yes, their their membership lists …. and little else! They do not need to weaken their effectiveness by snowing themselves under with a load of waffle and trivia about the Homes For Homeless Homing Pigeon Society or the cake-making sub-committee of the Bullamakanka C.W.A.
This can be achieved quite easily and with our consent through new, well-debated and far wiser laws than we have now. Laws that would not allow all the Sneaky Pete ratbaggery – and especially the pointless use of agents provocateurs, as was pointed out by Marlon back at [9] – that has been a substitute for intelligence gathering for far too long.
Instead of looking to the soon-to-be-EX Dictator Of America for our inspiration for effective security and intelligence laws, let’s try doing something sensible for a change …. like looking at the laws of democracies in the non-English-speaking world to see how they balance civil liberties with the need for national security …. or, since he seems to like that sort of thing, talk Kevin Rudd into holding public consultation meetings in every part of around Australia so as to find our how WE want OUR security and intelligence system to serve OUR security needs.
“Everyone:
If we are to be protected against very real threats from organized crime and from terrorists then OUR [not foreign!!] security and intelligence organizations do need accurate information about social groups, their aims and their broad activities and, yes, their their membership lists …. and little else! They do not need to weaken their effectiveness by snowing themselves under with a load of waffle and trivia about the Homes For Homeless Homing Pigeon Society or the cake-making sub-committee of the Bullamakanka C.W.A.”
I thought I had read just about everything on the blogs,but this really takes the cake.The thinking that created the National Socialists, a sweet and temperate phrase for the Nazi’s, alive and well on L.P.
One can only guess what ‘for example’ European Jewry would think of that idea..
Who said truth was stranger than fiction?
Re 2:
As you mention, although the individual that was the subject of the news article infiltrated Socialist Alternative, that does not imply that Socialist Alliance has not been infiltrated. I would be very surprised indeed if Socialist Alliance (and some of its various member socialist groups) were not infiltrated.
Peter Wood,
If Socialist Alliance was/is infiltrated – sometimes I thought they tapprd my phones and read my e-mails, seriously, – they’d be uninfiltrated pretty quickly. It takes outsiders about a quarter of a meeting for people to realise we’re an utterly harmless mob. Even Kevin Rudd has been photographed reading the Green Left Weekly.Only RWDBs would perceive as anything but an advantage to Australian democracy and politics.Especially nowadays, when people like the Brits suddenly realise Socialism is the only way out of the mess extreme Capitalism has put the world in. Marx is becoming a best seller again. 1,500 copies of Das Kapital sold in one day in Germany recently.
Paul,
if the Socialist Alliance is harmless, then so is Socialist Alternative, the various anti-war coalitions, etc etc. But they were still infiltrated, and for some time, it would appear. I’ve never seen a pic of Rudd reading GLW, but there is one of him reading the Socialist Alliance 2004 Election manifesto…
My initial point was that we don’t know that Socialist Alliance has been infiltrated. We may be. It largely doesn’t matter in practice, because we don’t organise on a secretive, conspiratorial basis, unlike, say, some anarchist groups. Instead (as you know), we make our politics and organising as open as possible, with the aim of disseminating our ideas broadly. If cops want to join, well, I won’t say I in any way approve, but…
Where it does matter is when it interferes with our activities, and is a massive incursion into civil liberties, and the practice of democracy.
Also, it’s worth noting that during the 70s and 80s the SWP (now the DSP, part of the Socialist Alliance) was apparently infiltrated several times. At least one of the infiltrators was turned, and admitted they had been working undercover for some years.
Finally, I must say I’m a little impressed at Vic Police for being able to pull it off. Up here in NSW the police attempts to infiltrate *anything* political usually collapse in ineptitude as soon as they’ve started. I’m reminded of the undercovers they plant in protests. They all wear *exactly* the same clothes (sometimes the same garments at subsequent rallies), and stand out like sore thumbs.
I read somewhere that Toye de Wilde said surveillance of Brisbane’s homosexual community by police was quite common in the fifties and sixties.
I don’t have a reference. It could be one of those he said/she said things that I think are so cool
Actually, I probably do somewhere, but sheesh, if the Intelligence doesn’t buy my book – who will?
Out of curiosity, how did you know that, Adrien?
.
Flatmate of mine went to N Korea to attend the International Conference of Youth and Students then he went to Libya to attend the Revolutionaries” College (apparently there is such a thing). When he came back a the obligatory white van started appearing in the neighbourhood for no apparent reason and our phone started its echo-click-click noises. Six months.
.
Oh and I was a student hack. File opened standard practice. These were the days still haunted by Joh.
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Have to go now and report to my Controller.
Wombo,
Absolutely agree with you. Its an absolute waste of police resources. But then again that’s nothing new.
Adrien, what I can’t understand is why we in the intelligence services could never come up with a quiet tap. Echo echo this, click click that. This shouldn’t be the electrical engineering problem of the century. It’s embarrassing.
BBB
Adrien, you’re too openly and consistently contemptuous of leftists and left politics to be an undercover cop and anyhow it’s pretty thin pickings for ASIO on a site like LP where redblooded leftists are few and far between and subversion in any shape or form completely non-existent.
The people most likely to be cops are indeed those who sing the songbook religiously but, I would add, with either the intent of political or organisation derailment or failure, or more mundanely, the collection of data and in-house gossip. Some of which is important.
The freak at the TUTA course might have been a fantasist. Who knows? He did spend an entire evening telling me he worked for ASIO and insisting he wanted me to agree to be a paid agent. It was very tedious since we were stuck out at someone’s house in western Melbourne at a post-course party. I don’t think I could have been of any real interest to ASIO but do note that a hell of a lot of men seem to have the same fantasy – in my experience. Interesting pathology.
When th NSW Special Branch was dissolved, due to public protest at the Hilton fiasco, its files were copied and passed on to Customs, the AFP and the ACC. So none of that valuable innuendo, rumour, malevolence or idiocy was lost.
If ASIO ASIS, and others want to watch us, it doesn’t worry me, so long as they are only watching and scribbling down notes to be put onto files that are never used. It is only if ASIO uses its reserve powers and becomes Australa’s GPU, Stazi, or Gestapo, that the various activist groups and individuals will have serious problems.
In United States 60 & 72 year old nuns who painted the cross with their own blood at a nuclear missile site are “terrorists” according to the CIA.
To reply to Jo at 43
I recall the story got a bit of a run in WA where journos caught wind of some people who were badly effected. Also found a mention with some details here: http://mailman.mcmaster.ca/mailman/private/cdn-nucl-l/0209.gz/msg00093.html
Also, if memory serves, people who have cancer that had spread from the breast or prostate to their bones in NZ were affected.
Radiopharmaceutical production is highly complicated, nuclear reactors work on cycles, and isotopes are shortlived so there was no opportunity to produce these drugs for at least a month.
Something to consider next time you are asked to contribute to Greenpeace.
Marlon [54]:
Boy-oh-boy, are you ever off on a tangent! Just take a look at the early history of the Nazi Party and you’ll see just why you are wrong; the Weimar Republic failed to protect itself against murderous extremists like the Nazis – it was either alert individuals or rival political parties [whether Neo-Monarchist, Conservative, Socialist or Communist] that hindered the Nazis’ rise to absolute power; the national government of republican Germany was too decent, too aloof, too trusting to have a really effective, modern internal security system. The Weimar Republic perished in 1933 beacuse it was too slow and too weak to save itself; it lacked the “white blood cells” to protect itself against the virulent infection of Nazism.
There will be no need for internal security in the Kingdom of Heaven; meanwhile, down here in the imperfect world with so many thoroughly nasty evil-doers on the loose, there is still a need to protect ourselves against harm to ourselves from organized crime, from terrorism and from actively-hostile espionage.
Anyway, take a good look at Luke Weyland’s comment [63] below.
Everyone:
If we ever do manage to get strong laws controlling the operations of our own security and intelligence organizations [fat chance - but one continues to hope .... such laws must have rigorously enforced measures to stop officers and contractors of those organizations ever again prostituting themselves to [a] Foreign governments, [b] Private corporations, [c] Specific political parties and individual politicians. It is ridicuous that we have a judiciary that is at arms-length from political, commercial and other influences and yet we tolerate a security system that seems hell-bent on running messages for every foreign ruler, business crook, ratbag politician and anyone else who happens to come along and snap his fingers …. that’s nearly as bad as tolerating military officers who hop into bed with the merchants of grossly-overpriced dud war-toys.
It seems to me as a casual lurker (from nowhere in particular) that everyone that has contributed upon this line of inquisition does not put their face beside their comments! What do you all have to hide? Put your valuable contributions where a smiling face should be, we’re all friends in the Australian Panopticon. Who’s afraid of The Big Bad Wolf?
I was ejected from a pub after having 3 drinks, and then issued a move-on notice shortly after for no reason. I was fined $650 in total despite causing no harm to anyone and breaking no law. Since I can’t afford a lawyer I had no choice but to pay the fine. Which I did over a period of several months.
Hope that makes you feel good about yourself.
FWIW police in Perth could charge every single protestor who ever stepped foot in Perth under the same laws and they would have no defense.
It’s an unjust law and if you really cared about liberty instead of simply caring about socialism, you would be appalled that I could be arrested in that way. But you guys aren’t even trying to keep up the pretence any more.
“Who’s afraid of The Big Bad Wolf?”
No one. Especially as you lack the courage to show your face. (Um..OK you were joking weren’t you?)
“Since I can’t afford a lawyer I had no choice but to pay the fine.”
Cheer up Yobbo. In a libertarian world, everyone’s a lawyer.
“It’s an unjust law and if you really cared about liberty instead of simply caring about socialism, you would be appalled that I could be arrested in that way. But you guys aren’t even trying to keep up the pretence any more.”
Yobbo me old China, it is your side of politics that got you in the shit with Plod.
Law and order is their stock in trade, and you couldn’t afford a lawyer? Wasn’t it you who not that long ago was telling everyone what a great gambler you were? I would have thought $650 bucks was a couple of winning hands for you..Maybe your not such a good gambler.
“Boy-oh-boy, are you ever off on a tangent!”
Graham with all due respect, I don’t need a history lesson on how the Nazi party came to power.I have read many theory’s, and yours unfortunately for you, was never mentioned.
What social groups do, their aims or activities, are nobody’s business including our external or internal security apparatus.If a law is broken, than I am all for prosecuting the offenders to the full extent of the law.That does not mean giving them carte blanche to spy on its citizens.
It wasn’t that long ago on this very blog, people were going absolutely tropical over the Hicks and Haneef affair, our security services were blamed for being involved in all sorts of cover ups, and breaking our own laws.
There is a group of young people in Bali at the moment that may be subject to execution, information that was gathered in Australia to prosecute them was fine, but you know as well as I do, where that information ended up.
Moreover, the Police forces in Australia have had the fair share of corruption, unfettered power by these groups, is as dangerous as the terrorists, drug dealers,and other shit bags they are supposed to be protecting us from.
If you don’t mind a mob of Inspector Clouseau,or Maxwell Smart types spying on you, fine but I don’t,and most fair minded people don’t like it either.
Jinmaro, back at [15] you said
Not just ASIO back then but probably right across the board.
It was probably a Cold War thing. The Chinese Communists purged themselves of staff who were particularly bright but only luke-warm about Maxism-Leninism-MaoTseTung Thought and, following Mao’s principle of “Better to be Red than Expert”, replaced them with thoroughly reliable hard-line Party fanatics …. who were not always the brightest lights on the Christmas tree.
We could outdo the Communists in anything they did …. and we did – in spades!. And so we got absolutely loyal Menzies voters who could sing “The Star Spangled Banner” in their sleep. They mightn’t have been the best thing for our actual national security interests but, my goodness gracious, they were good at what they were good at, you mark my words.
Anyway, by the ‘eighties or thereabouts, the pendulum swung the right over to the opposite side, the folly of having only political zealots was realized and, instead, our security organizations recruited highly-qualified, high-IQ staff …. trouble is, they were somewhat lacking in street-smarts so that when Mr Bush’s TransPacific Poodle got into power, he knew he had a tame bunch of exceedingly clever suckers on his hands and he used them unmercifully as his very own playthings.
It wasn’t all gloomy though. A few intelligence experts, like Andrew Willkie, had the guts and the patriotism to stand up to political manipulation and the abuse of power.
Yobbo: ‘Since I can’t afford a lawyer I had no choice but to pay the fine.’
So you *do* recognise that freedom is dependent on ability to pay for it?
Of course, in libertopia, police never make mistakes.
Or maybe because there’s no tax, lawyers make so much money, that they only need to do a few hours paid work a week, and spend the rest of their time doing pro bono work to help out those who are too lazy to make enough money to afford lawyers…
Back on topic (sort of), I read a recent “Adelaide Review” which contained a trip down memory lane – there was an article about Students for Democratic Action (with whom I was briefly associated in the late 60s). I reckon that’d make it a certainty that I had a Special Branch file, and probably an ASIO file as well. I was pleasantly surprised to get cleared to Top Secret a few years ago.
Dave, when you went through the security vetting process for the TS clearance, did they ask you any uncomfortable questions about all that Holocaust denial you’ve engaged in?
Heh.
Middle stump.
Oh my, yes.
Wizofaus, I dips me lid.
Marlon [70]:
Where did I put up any “theories”? I had simply LISTENED to those who had been “participant observers” – whether very, very unwillingly or rather gleefully – in those events …. [and not just Germans either]. If that is at variance with anything you read or wrote – well, stiff bikkies.
What happened to the Weimar Republic, together with the appalling things that have been allowed to happen to the United States in recent years, are powerful reasons for me wanting to see Australia avoid a similar fate …. and I’m far from alone in that desire..
By the way, I happened to have been one of the many people who copped a lot of flak for criticizing sloppy inelligence work, for condemning torture and for wanting Hicks and Habib brought back to Australia and allowed the free exercise of their inalienable right to the presumption of innocence. So far, there has been truly spectacular lack of evidence that those with similar views to mine “supported terrorism” in any way whatsoever.
After pondering the idea for a while, I’ve concluded that the inept attempts to infiltrate Friends of the Earth et al are probably training exercises for junior officers. At least, I hope they are, and that we don’t have fresh-faced young officers infiltrating organised crime groups without proper cover stories.
Paulus, that’s why I specify (no relation). Always.
It costs a fair bit to hire a lawyer to argue to have a law stricken off the books.
WA laws contain a law enabling police to force you to leave an area for *any* reason at police discretion. These laws were originally implemented to deal with the homeless but are now abused by police at every opportunity to keep anyone under the age of 40 out of the CBD.
It’s not a simple case of me hiring a lawyer to say “I didnt do it” but moreso hiring a lawyer to argue against the law Im being charged with. If you weren’t such a window-licker you’d know that that sort of case is prohibitively expensive and only really exist when a lawyer with an interest in the case is willing to do it pro-bono.
To pay for it myself would cost tens of thousands of dollars to avoid a $500 fine.
That is why these unjust laws are allowed to survive in Australia, tiny fines as a result mean they are never worth fighting against even if you have an interest in doing so. Is a legal system where laws are never worth challenging because the argument costs more than the punishment what you guys really want?
Of course not, you are trolls who want lulz.
“WA laws contain a law enabling police to force you to leave an area for *any* reason at police discretion”
And I’d challenge you to find a single genuine lefty that supported such a law: indeed we generally put significant emphasis on the need for public spacees where people can freely gather for various reasons (there was even a thread about this here recently).
I’m not sure if you’re in the “all-land-should-be-privately-owned” camp of extremist libertarisism, but I am curious as to what you think the solution should be?
(Finally fixed my mistyped-nick: kudos to FDB for realising it was exactly that!)
Yes Yobbo, lulz was had at your expense. Diddums.
Not sure if ‘troll’ is accurate, but whatevs.
You’re dead right in the case of your own brush with the long rectal probe of the law though. As wizofaus says you won’t likely find anyone here defending either what happened to you or the ridiculous law in question.
Me – I just got slapped with a $570 fine for my car being 2 days out of rego. Ostensibly because “every car on the road needs third party insurance”. This despite the WA rego giving you a 2-week grace period of coverage – in Victoria apparently it doesn’t matter that you do have 3rd party, just that you wouldn’t if you had Vic rego. Or something.
Everyone:
You have the choice – of deciding what sort of a security & intelligence system you want to protect you and how you want it to do so …. or …. of tolerating an unfair, even malicious, system imposed on you by people who do not have your best interests at heart; people who would not hestitate to use gullible, naive or just plain crooked police and licenced hoodlums to do their dirty-work for them.
There are several continua involved in having a security & intelligence system, including:
Observant or intrusive?
Protective or oppressive?
Rational or obsessive?
Tolerant or fanatical?
Subject to reasonable public oversight or a law unto themselves?
Recruited from the broader community or an exclusive club of crooks and cranks?
Honorable or as crooked as a dog’s hind-leg?
Focused or chaotic?
Well-trained or just run on bad habits and even worse practices?
Minimal cost or horrendously expensive?
Impartial and independent or dominated by cliques and ideologues?
Serving our national interests or the puppet of a foreign ruler?
My own preference is for a security & intelligence system that is observant but respectfully tolerant of all the untidy, rowdy diversity we are entitled to have, and should have, in a healthy democracy; that upholds our traditional hard-won rights; that is independent and impartial; that is not subservient to any faction; one that concentrates its attention on discovering and frustrating those who actually do intend murdering us, destroying our nation and doing us untold harm …. and not on perving on ordinary people doing what they are lawfully entitled to do.
What’s your preference?
I’m pretty okay with your list Graham, with one small alteration:
“not on perving on ordinary people [who may or may not be] doing what they are lawfully entitled to do, [even though someone really really wants them to be guilty, not mentioning any names *cough*Andrews*cough*Keelty*cough*].”
BBB – Adrien, what I can’t understand is why we in the intelligence services could never come up with a quiet tap. Echo echo this, click click that. This shouldn’t be the electrical engineering problem of the century. It’s embarrassing.
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That’s old school man. These days – you make a call on the mobile and a missile comes straight down and blows your head apart like a melon without ruining the wallpaper.
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Well you might have to replace the wallpaper.
#62 Jinmaro -Adrien, you’re too openly and consistently contemptuous of leftists and left politics to be an undercover cop…
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Exactly. It was a joke? I apologize for my witlessness.
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…thin pickings for ASIO on a site like LP where redblooded leftists are few and far between and subversion in any shape or form completely non-existent.
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Hear that Kevvie lovers? Is this a ratbag I see before me?
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The people most likely to be cops are indeed those who sing the songbook religiously but, I would add, with either the intent of political or organisation derailment or failure, or more mundanely, the collection of data and in-house gossip. Some of which is important.
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Yep. Given that the Animal Rights bozo didn’t even know the local vegan restaurants (how hard is that – seriously) I’d say Special Branch is continuing the fine old Oz secret service tradition of being unorganized grabasstic pieces of amphibian shit. I’m not too eager to address this problem.
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The freak at the TUTA course might have been a fantasist. Who knows? He did spend an entire evening telling me he worked for ASIO and insisting he wanted me to agree to be a paid agent.
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A fantasist or incompetent. He should’ve worked out that you were interested before revealing his cards.
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Interesting pathology.
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Have you seen Burn After Reading? It satirizes this very pathology in the context of mindless consumerism. Hilarious.
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Incidentally I am contemptuous about many things associated with the Left. Partially this is ideological, partially strategic. I am however much more critical of the world than I was in the days when I might’ve been inclined to a ‘Che’ t-shirt. And not from a position of conservatism. I still adhere to Oscar Wilde’s Utopian vision as put forth in The Soul of Man Under Socialism that a man(sic) is defined by what s/he is not what s/he owns.
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Given Wilde’s unconscious and exclusionary chauvinism and the lack of a viable procedure in that essay it’s evident that then we monkeys had a ways to go. We still do. Given also that the industrial barrack culture, the Authoritarian Socialism that Wilde expressed a fear of, ibid, came about in many parts of the world, there are lessons for us to learn. Left and Right.
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I think a society free of the bonds of coercion including shithouse work – a worthwhile goal, the goal even, but I don’t expect to see it. And I don’t think government mandated equality answers many of the questions to which we must develop answers in order for progress to obtain. Hence not socialist.
Graham Bell – What happened to the Weimar Republic, together with the appalling things that have been allowed to happen to the United States in recent years, are powerful reasons for me wanting to see Australia avoid a similar fate …. and I’m far from alone in that desire..
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Hear hear!!!
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And if them varmits try’n organize a mil’tary-’n-dus-tral complex hereaways I’ll help ’round up the posse ta run’m outta town.
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Can we run ‘em outta town? Or is it too late?
Ouch. I’ve just paid $202 for doing 59 in a 50 zone, myself. And I done it, Guv’nor, they caught me bang to rights. It’s the ‘setting fire to ten $20 notes and watching them burn’ thing that hurts.
‘ts too late. The only viable allies we had ( http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/bernard.smith/manifesto/front.htm ) appear to have folded – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGillicuddy_Serious_Party
Is that the military technology invented by the australian guy, Adrien? If so I remember seeing him interviewed and it was most unsettling. His only interest was in solving an abstract design problem and the use to which it would be put did not exercise his conscience at all. Reminded me of Cube.
FDB [85]:
Excellent amendment.
Adrien [88]:
Decades too late. The “military-industrial complex” has been cemented into the Australian economy and impossible to remove ever since Menzies came to power – hadn’t you noticed all the absolutely crazy defence “procurement”[???] shenanegans that have gone on over the years?
Everyone:
Judging by all the mentions of secret agents infiltrating community groups, the Great Intelligence Fallacy is alive and flourishing in Australia …. that is the delusion that whatever is found out by covert methods must, of itself, be of far greater intelligence value that that which is found out by open means. Guess what …. some of the greatest intelligence finds in the last half-century were on TV and seen by millions or readily available in publications …. it just took c.d.f. intelligence to see the intelligence [military/political/commercial] value in them. There has always been a very very small but useful place for espionage in intelligence gathering too – but playing at Junior G-Men and pestering the dear ladies int the gladioli society or the fervent noisy enthusiasts in the legal-rights-for-penguins alliance doesn’t quite qualify as espionage though.
Adrien@87.
Apology accepted.
I can’t argue with much of what you wrote.
I am interested in what you mean exactly by: “Given Wilde’s unconscious and exclusionary chauvinism and the lack of a viable procedure in that essay”?
Su – Is that the military technology invented by the australian guy, Adrien?
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Yes. His focus on the technical aspects of his design without recourse to moral implications is typical. The science guy in The Simpsons who wanted Abe Simpson to spend his inheritance on a death ray. He says on refusal: Well in truth the ray only has evil applications.
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That said when I heard about it I thought of some old bushy yackin’ on about the overwhelming supremacy (considering only the numbers) of Indonesia’s armed forces to ours. Whilst it remains true that states need to defend themselves there will be a need for armies. This makes the judgment of the use of such tricky at the very least.
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In Australia there are many people, myself among them, who believe that we should wean ourselves off the recourse to Imperial protection. However many on this side of the debate refuse to face the inevitable consequence of a boost to military spending and servitude.
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Perhaps Metal Storm is an answer to this dilemma. Distasteful as it is.
Graham – The “military-industrial complex” has been cemented into the Australian economy and impossible to remove ever since Menzies came to power – hadn’t you noticed all the absolutely crazy defence “procurement”[???] shenanegans that have gone on over the years?
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I’ve noticed the debate over the purchase of the F-22 Raptor. People better versed than myself seem dead against it. As the link shows, the deal’s in trouble.
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I’m not sure I agree that it’s too late to avoid the US style entanglement with the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). In the first place I don’t know what I’m talking about. And in the second, a state’s dependence on the MIC is directly proportional to its defence spending. The Sov MIC, for example, accounted for somewhere in the order of 1 out of every 7 jobs in Russia. That’s a lot. The temporary roll-back of the Sov MIC in the early ’90s contributed to the impoverishment of fin-de-siecle post-Sovs.
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It’s also a thorn in the side for those who argue that the US should reduce its MIC. As the thoughtful advocates of this policy have noted, the US MIC generates trillions for the US economy. The industries that make weapons would be very hard hit, for example, if Obama was to succeed in changing what he calls the energy economy. What reason would there be for the 5th fleet to operate should the US no longer be interested in the Mid-East?
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Hence the collusion and merger one witnesses between military concerns on the one hand and oil companies, exploration firms and the rest on the other. All, it appears, glued together by some variant or other of Apocalyptic Religious Fundamentalism – What a great situation.
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Why didn’t they listen to Eisenhower?
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In any event we in Australia have less defense spending than we would ordinarily have because of the ANZUS alliance as well as the ever growing co-operation between ourselves, the US and the democratic states of Asia. Our MIC is too small to wield that much influence. But Metal Storm (whose main investor is the US military) could well change that. Governments love money. And they’ll hang on to an income stream even if the source of it is absurd and counter-productive (eg the payroll tax).
Jinmaro – I am interested in what you mean exactly by: “Given Wilde’s unconscious and exclusionary chauvinism and the lack of a viable procedure in that essay”?
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His unconscious chauvanism is the reference to ‘man’ meaning all humanity.
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Of course, as enthusiastic advocates of traditional rhetoric will tell you, ‘Man’ does mean humanity in general properly speaking. The male specified is homan, or some such. In any event we don’t use this term and Wilde’s expressions of the tyranny of work centre on working class males sweeping streets and so forth. He doesn’t address the plight of a woman married to such a man who would probably have two jobs, only one of which paid anything.
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The second is that, altho’ Wilde strenuously rejects authoritarian socialism as even worse than capitalism (no-one would be free), he has no strategy to either prevent this or proceed to his Utopia. As Hannah Arendt has observed many of those odious power structures the Left disapprove of so earnestly are answers to questions that will still stand if you remove them. It is not enough to remove them. One has to generate a better answer.
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This usually doesn’t happen. Normally we destroy the old first and then attempt to make something new from the resultant rubble. The outcome is, more often than not, something along the lines of the plot of Animal Farm.
David Irving [NR] [7] and Pavlov’s Cat [11]:
wpd on [8] and epicene [63] might have good points. It’s not just that information – and misinformation and dysinformation – from old Police Special Branch files may still exist …. but, since all the old files are said to have been destroyed, that there is no way at all to correct any lies, exaggerations, misinterpretations, malicious gossip, errors and downright risible mistakes in them. True, the paper documents may no longer exist but the potential for mischief and injustice from them probably continues to exists in another form. And of course, whatever is in an official record must always be absolutely true and beyond question …. never mind what the people targeted actually knew or did or were. What was that about GIGO? [= garbage in, garbage out].
Paulus [50]:
So do you believe, then, that the various Police Special Branches were far too small to keep up with all their official duties let alone to have had the time, the staff or the resources to do any informal jobs or to return unofficial favours? Yeah. Right. Of course. And what else did the Easter Bunny have to say?
Yobbo [68]:
Sadly, you are right about that law having the potential to be misused against people exercising their democratic rights. I’ll bet it is not what the legislators intended at all when they passed that bill.
A) The big problem with Metal Storm is that it involves major retooling throughout the supply chain. Like hydrogen cars. Too much infrastructure and vested interests in the way.
B) If you eavesdrop on or infiltrate enough protest groups you could be turned yourself like the MI5 officer, Cathy Massiter, who spent so much time listening to bugged CND conversations, she ended up joining them. Or on a slightly different scale, you might start feeling your side is so full of crap you’d pull a Powell.
C) Why not join the establishment and fuck ‘em up from from within? After all you’re smarter than those national security thickies aren’t you? What’s stopping you from replacing ‘em?
D) It’s endlessly fucking boring and soul-eroding boring in from within to achieve point C.
E) I still have all my own hair but my boss doesn’t anymore.
F) I’m now listening to ‘Louie, Louie’ by the Kingsmen.
G) There is no point G.
As Leonard Cohen so eloquently put it in ‘First We Take Manhattan’:
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
For trying to change the system from within
Nabakov – I think that your point G is the answer we’ve all been looking for. It explains Life, the Universe and Everythingy.
Adrien@96:
Oh pleeez. I am a feminist of some longevity and I never read Wilde’s essay and thought he wasn’t talking about me. It is laughable to lay such an asinine politically correct burden on the wily Wilde and frankly makes me think how anal and rigid are the very people who accuse leftists of being proscriptive, unrealistic and impractical.
I’d put Wilde’s essay into the category of essential children’s literature – along with “The Happy Prince” – and say that his primary interest was aesthetics not political economy or ethics or governance. He was a utopian Adrien, rather than a socialist and as he said no map of the world is useful or worth reading unless it includes a Utopia.
“It is laughable to lay such an asinine politically correct burden on the wily Wilde and frankly makes me think how anal and rigid are the very people who accuse leftists of being proscriptive, unrealistic and impractical.”
Sweet, so it’s blokes and chicks open slather from here on in?
“It is laughable to lay such an asinine politically correct burden on the wily Wilde and frankly makes me think how anal and rigid are the very people who accuse leftists of being proscriptive, unrealistic and impractical.”
You’re half right. Wily Wilde is dead, so there’s no point in complaining to him about his English usage. However, using “man/men” to denote the entire human race has been found to help in making half of the human rage the default and the other half, or actually somewhat more than half, the exception. This is by no means the cause of all our problems but it certainly doesn’t help. Therefore, there’s a good reason to ditch the usage.
/Thread derail – sorry.
I’m especially concerned with private firms such as Hakluyt and Co moving into such operations. Like their military counterparts KBR and Blackwater, they are less transparent and even less amenable to regulation than the government ones (who couldn’t organise a pissup in a brewery anyway, according to some of the above comments.) Rodney Eddington is employed as our head of Infrastructure and he used to work for Hakluyt and Co, which infiltrated green groups on behalf of BP and Shell; what kind of commitment to public transport and bicycle infrastructure are we going to get from someone who was attached to the fossil fuel lobby? What other private firms are sniffing around and influencing public policy – apart that is, from the other astroturfing outfits we already know and love?
Really? How nice for you. Have you read it?
I agree. It is asinine. Fine word ‘asinine’.
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I added the qualification principally in furtherance of rounding off this tedious and obligatory anality at the pass. I’m afraid I’ve become accustomed to the standard requirement to add peripheral prologue viz “I am not a [insert appropriate term]” to any political discussion I partake in. With those of the Left and Right might I add. I have been called an anti-Semite, a fascist, a Windschuttlian revisionist, a Communist, a market-fundamentalist, an American style Social-liberal etcetera. None of these labels is remotely true and the use of them was never appropriate coming from anyone with the least capacity for deductive reasoning.
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I don’t know you and hence I default to experience.
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Apologies for any insult to your intelligence. Still Wilde’s essay is written from the perspective of a dead white male. A living white male would tend to be more aware of gender specificity, yes? Evidence of progress?
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I think the adherents of various ideologies classified under the over-simplistic Left/Right schema are each in their own ways blind. They tend to be blind to different things is all. An artifact, possibly, of the circumstance that today’s political thinking has descended from the Religious Warfare of the 16th and 17th centuries.