Tag: war on terror

Posted on

Fed Police chief proposes “Reprogramming”

You probably missed it, but last week Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Keelty actually proposed forcibly “reprogramming” people’s political beliefs.

Speaking on ABC TV’s Lateline on 8 March, Keelty says we should look at techniques which have been used “successfully” in such bastions of human rights as Indonesia, Singapore and Pakistan — even referring to it as “best practice”.

Keelty equates reprogramming people to convincing an informer to give evidence, and says this is the next step… to re-program somebody who has a belief or holds a belief. It has already been discussed with the government in the context of anti-terrorism control orders.

Commissioner Keelty, just in case you’ve forgotten Articles 18 and 19 of the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, here’s a refresher…

Continue reading “Fed Police chief proposes “Reprogramming””

Posted on

We Are At War!

“We are again locked in war,” says Roger Bell. “Locked in an ideological battle, locked in the language — very exaggerated language — of ideological conflict.”

Roger Bell, Professor of International Studies at the University of New South Wales, isn’t surprised that the debates and contexts of McCarthyism have resurfaced.

[These debates are] particularly about free speech, and in a broader sense also about — in the American case — about Americanism, and un-American activities, about traitors within, about evil enemies etc.

So when Bush speaks in my view in very exaggerated terms, about the evil of Islam, or the evil of terrorism, he, as it were, takes the political rhetoric to another level. And when acts such as the Patriot Act are invoked domestically to repress or to limit freedom of expression at home, then it’s to be expected that many of those traditional debates in a democratic society will re-surface.

Part of a much longer conversation in ABC Radio National program The Media Report last week. Worth a listen. (transcript) (podcast)