Tag Archive for 'civil liberties'

The No Clean Feed campaign

Published
by
Mark
2 months ago
in Activism, Authoritarianism, Policy, Politics, Sociology and The Web
. 57 Comments

Alex White has posted on what he describes as soul searching in the campaign against internet filtering about its direction. White’s post is replete with useful links, and is well worth a read. He disagrees with the focus on censorship, arguing that there are few points of connection with the lived experience of the public to shift opinion.

I’m not sure I agree.

White’s alternative messages focus on the ineffectuality of the filter, and its expense. However, that’s not, in my view, a persuasive theme for a public campaign. A lot of what the government does is ineffectual and expensive, and pointing this out also doesn’t necessarily create a public. It’s really just akin to the everyday niggling of oppositions and newspapers.

Any campaign does need an overarching theme, and this angle should be a subsidiary message.

The other question that needs to be posed is that of the audience. It’s no doubt right that few votes will shift in the right places to enable an argument to be made about an adverse electoral impact on Labor. White cites Possum and Bernard Keane. More broadly, findings from the AES over many years suggest that even the biggest issues only account for a few percentage points in vote switching at elections. For instance, the final data on the impact of WorkChoices (an issue which connects with lived experience, if there was ever one) on 2007 voting patterns hasn’t been fully analysed, but it’s unlikely to have been worth more than a couple of percent of the vote to the ALP. Labor strategists and pollies are well aware of this sort of thing.

The actual target for the No Clean Feed campaign needs to be non-Labor Senators. There, the issues of civil liberties and censorship are well chosen for their resonance with small l Liberals and The Greens. It’s also necessary to demonstrate that concern exists in the community beyond those who are active in the campaign itself, but this doesn’t need to be a clincher argument about seats falling in droves, which no one would believe. Rather, a point of connection with the messages particular parties want to send is necessary, and the best way to find that theme is to test it via polling and focus groups rather than speculate in a vacuum. The dilemma, though, that this causes for the campaign is that the most germane themes may not be the ones that resonate with activists in the campaign itself. So that needs to be balanced as well.

It’s a bit of a case study on the limitations, as well as the benefits, of crowdsourced campaigning.

Update: Colin Jacobs of the EFA responds on LP.

Open Democracy’s retrospective and prospective look at the decade/s

Published
by
Mark
2 months, 1 week ago
in Authoritarianism, Climate change, Developing world, Economics, Environment, International, Markets, Politics, Security, Sociology, Terrorism, The Web and War
. 12 Comments

Open Democracy has asked a range of its contributors to answer the following questions:

A volcanic decade in global politics ends amid deep unease about the world’s ability to rise to key 21st-century challenges. openDemocracy writers draw breath and look ahead by reflecting on three questions:

1) What was the most significant trend in the century’s first decade?

2) What do you most hope for, and most fear, about the decade to come?

3) What idea do you see fading and/or emerging in 2010 and beyond?

Their reflections and prognostications can be found here and here.

Reading through the responses, a number of common themes emerge. One is the rise of China and the end of a unipolar world (and in this context, it’s interesting to observe more evidence surfacing about the snubs Beijing has been giving Barack Obama). Associated with this theme is the end of the liberal optimism of the 1990s, the decline of effective peacekeeping and conflict resolution, and the rise of the anti-terror security state in the 2000s. Whatever the views of the ideologues of globalisation, it’s difficult not to conclude that the first decade of this century saw the state come back. While much could be written critical of the emergence of international human rights law and international co-ordination which was one of the important trends of the 90s, conversely urgent problems like climate change are insoluble without concerted world action (while the last years of the late decade showed that the global financial sector could be bailed out at all deliberate speed).

Here too, it might be germane to observe that the sort of authoritarian state led capitalism characteristic of the Chinese model has both its parallels and echoes in the West (as civil liberties decline and torture becomes an acceptable subject of public discourse) and that its rise challenges the 90s end of history/democratisation thesis that market activity brings civic virtue in its wake. For many of the writers, the 2000s were a somewhat dark decade, characterised by rising inequality. Notable is a focus on the practice of multinationals buying up huge swathes of agricultural land in developing countries (particularly in Africa); for instance the leasing of almost half Madagascar’s arable land by a South Korean corporation. This issue warrants more attention than it’s received. It’s in stark contrast with pronouncements such as the Millennium Goals, and symbolises the end of the discourse of development and the entrenchment of a core/periphery model in the global economy, aside from its obvious human and ecological implications.

There’s much to ponder here.

Interestingly, only a small number of contributors referred to the rise of social media and the dissemination of the internet as a key development of the 00s. That’s something I’ll take up presently in another post.

Something rotten in the state of Queensland?

Published
by
Mark
7 months, 2 weeks ago
in Authoritarianism, Brisbane, Crime, Media, Politics, Queensland and Sociology
. 39 Comments

From today’s Crikey:

There has been a certain feeling in the air of deja vu over the past fortnight in Queensland. The jailing of a former Minister, allegations that government was far too close to business, a government sinking rapidly in the polls while making “tough decisions” and, the piece de resistance, the exposure of systemic misconduct in the elite Armed Robbery Squad of the Queensland Police.

The timing of this sequence of supposedly unlikely events was interesting. Much is being made of the 20th anniversary of the release of the Fitzgerald Report. The date falls this Thursday, and Tony Fitzgerald QC himself will be commemorating the occasion with a public lecture at Griffith University.

So is something again rotten in the state of Queensland?

Lurid stories of convicted criminals wining, dining and bonking on dodgy day release jaunts supposedly to gather intelligence for the coppers dominated local press coverage. This a week after revelations of the jailed Gordon Nuttall’s bizarre plans to make himself premier — shades of Russ Hinze perhaps.

The reality, though, is more prosaic.

Continue reading ‘Something rotten in the state of Queensland?’

Bikie gangs and the law

Published
by
Robert Merkel
8 months, 1 week ago
in Crime and Law
. 36 Comments

Ken Parish has an excellent post at Club Troppo about the excessive reach of the “anti-bikie” laws recently enacted by several state parliaments. The powers, and the lack of safeguards on using them, provided by the laws are akin to the excesses of the anti-terrorism legislation (incidentally, when is sedition going to be taken off the books, Kevin Rudd?)

Amongst other things, this act permits “eligible judges” (hand-picked by the Attorney-General of the day) to proscribe organizations based on evidence which is not disclosed to either defendants or their lawyers.

I don’t have anything to add other than thanking Ken for drawing this to our attention. Why is it that every time we turn our backs on them, police forces are forever trying to acquire more powers, and supine governments are all too eager to hand such powers to them?

Rumble at the RNC

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 6 months ago
in Activism, Blogging, Foreign Elections, Media, Photography and USA
. 44 Comments

I was going to write a post last night about the demos in Minneapolis during the Republican National Convention and the extraordinary levels of repression and police violence, but tiredness got the better of me. But never mind, tigtog’s been thinking on the same lines and has put up a great post at Hoyden. She quotes Glenn Greenwald:

Yet how is our own Government’s behavior in Minnesota any different than what the Chinese did to its protesters during the Olympics (other than the fact that we actually have a Constitution that prohibits such behavior)? And where are all the self-righteous Freedom Crusaders in our nation’s establishment organs who were so flamboyantly criticizing the actions of a Government on the other side of the globe as our own Government engages in the same tyrannical, protest-squelching conduct with exactly the same motives?

What I found interesting about the reporting of these incidents is that there’s a great use of citizen photojournalism from Lindsay Beyerstein at Majikthise. Beyerstein was there, and she’s posted this photo – of the Poor People’s March – on her blog, with the telling caption:

Do these people look like a ravening mob to you? A few minutes later, the police tear gassed the whole block after pushed the crowd back about a block or two.

You can see all Beyerstein’s photos of the march at her Flickr page.

World Youth Day: The dark side of the force?

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 7 months ago
in Australiana, Culture, Film, TV, Video etc, Levity, Masculinity, NSW Government, Photography and Sydney
. 33 Comments

Elliott Bledsoe reminds us not to take men wearing robes all that seriously. Make sure you look at this photo very carefully indeed.

Note: If you don’t like what you see – tough – it’s now legal to be annoyed.

Continue reading ‘World Youth Day: The dark side of the force?’

Is criticism of World Youth Day automatically Catholic bashing?

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 8 months ago
in Authoritarianism, Ethics, Feminism, History, Lesbian and Gay, Media, NSW Government, Politics, Religion, Sexuality, Sydney and Urbanism
. 82 Comments

It’s no secret that “the sectarian strand” is one of the less attractive aspects of Australian history, and interestingly, probably not one featured highly either in the so-called “black armband” or triumphalist narratives so beloved of our home grown Antipodean culture warriors. That may be because the deep cleavages – overlapping but not identical to class and ethnicity – around Catholicism and Protestantism needed to be elided and to be buried in order to construct the “Anglo-Celtic” identity which came into its own at the same time that the state aid controversy was settled into its grave and multiculturalism launched on its career. And not coincidentally. “Anglos” and “Celts” were on different sides of the political and cultural coin in the Great Southern Land of the Holy Spirit for most of its whitefella history. In a way, Gough Whitlam is probably the progenitor of the “mainstream” Anglo-Celtic Australian. But sectarianism typically rears its head as a defensive accusation whenever the Catholic Church is particularly prominent in public debate, and whenever criticism is directed at the Church’s institutional power.

In the context of World Youth Day in Sydney this week, this accusation has been levelled both with regard to criticism of the extraordinary powers granted to police by Greg Craven and with regard to the ABC’s highlighting of Cardinal George Pell’s ethically very questionable handling of clergy sexual abuse complaints by Andrew Bolt. More broadly, the media sponsors of World Youth Day at News Limited have worked themselves into a lather of holy righteousness, denouncing “aggressive secularism” and lauding all the Popey goodness they’re sponsoring – without disclosing that sponsorship in their journalistic or opinion pieces.

It may well be that a residue of sectarian anti-Catholicism might be in play on the margins of all this, but one of the big ironies is that while Tony Abbott and others speculated that Pope Benedict’s message might not be communicated effectively, the Pope himself has seemingly become a football to be kicked around by the usual suspects in distinctly Australian culture wars which often have only a tenuous connection with his concerns. But are there not genuine issues – of public interest – that can and should be raised at a time when Catholicism is top of the pops in the media stakes?

Continue reading ‘Is criticism of World Youth Day automatically Catholic bashing?’

Gordon Brown triangulates like it’s 2001

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 year, 9 months ago
in Europe, Howardia, Law, Security and Terrorism
. 16 Comments

One of the most striking things about the Rudd era is the virtual disappearance of terrorism as a political issue. Aside from a passing reference in his 2020 Summit introductory speech, I have barely heard the words mentioned. While this can be partly attributed to the passing of time, it’s not the only reason. Look at what’s happening in the UK, where Gordon Brown has just bribed and blackmailed a bill authorizing 42 days of detention without charge for terrorism suspects through the Commons, despite widespread rebellion from Labour backbenchers.

The details of this grubby bill, and the tortuous process of getting it through the Commons, can be read at length at the Guardian, for those interested. In short, even the police and intelligence services (who never see an additional power they don’t like) seem remarkably unenthusiastic about the idea; the head of MI5 has even publicly stated that they haven’t requested it. The odds of it actually becoming law are not particularly high, either; the Lords will likely block it, and a court challenge is highly likely (and stands a good chance of succeeding). Regardless of the idea’s merits, however, Gordon Brown thinks he’s going to get a desperately needed win with the wider British public.. The Guardian quotes a poll with 69% of the British public approving the new measures.

It’s a moderately interesting hypothetical whether similar “tough on terrorism” laws would be a political winner in Australia at the moment. I’m very, very glad that Australian Labor don’t seem interested in finding out.