Gideon Polya, “Pro-war Australia Imprisons Anti-war US Teacher”, MWC News, 14 September 2005.
Pro-war Australia Imprisons Anti-war US Teacher
An American teacher, environmentalist and PEACE activist Scott Parkin has been imprisoned without charge in Melbourne, Australia as a "security risk" and awaits deportation without any explanation. His guards have been ordered not to allow the media to talk to him. Civil rights advocates have been appalled.
The Greens Senator Dr Bob Brown (ejected from the Australian Parliament last year for protesting the presence of George W. Bush) "claimed that Mr Parkin was targeted because of his anti-Iraq war campaign against the US company Halliburton, which is close to the Bush administration" ("The Australian", Wednesday 14 September 2005).
Driven by racist and pro-war politician and mainstream media lying and spin, White Australia is becoming a police state with hysterical support after the London bombings for EXTENSION of already draconian silencing and detention without trial measures - ALREADY free speech and association are direly constrained; anyone, including non-suspects, can be arrested without charge, detained and interrogated over 7 days and then re-arrested; 5 years imprisonment for disclosure of details of the detention within 2 years prevents reportage of detention and associated abuses.
The following letter concerning civil rights and non-state/state terrorism threats in Australia was sent on 13 September 2005 to ALL members of both Houses of the Australian Federal Parliament:
Australian democracy is facing an acute threat arising from dishonestly-fomented hysteria over the recent terrorist atrocities in London. A scientist for 4 decades, I would urge you to consider the following scientific analysis of the threat to Australia from non-state and state terrorism.
Rational, World's Best Practice approaches to risk management (critically employed in high risk areas such as the nuclear industry, defence and aviation) successively involve (a) untrammeled reportage, (b) rational, scientific analysis of the data and (c) systemic change for a safer environment (James Reason, Human error: models and management, British Medical Journal vol. 320, pp768-770, 2000).
Unfortunately typical risk management approaches successively involve (a) secrecy, lying, spin, censorship, self-censorship, intimidation and threats to whistleblowers, (b) political and self-serving analysis and (c) blaming, shaming and "shooting the messenger" with no systemic change.
The Coalition Government and politicized and intimidated public servants are comprehensively following World's Worst Practice in addressing Australia's security as well illustrated by the "children overboard" affair [when the Australian Government demonized hundreds of Muslim refugees rescued in August 2001 by the container ship Tampa in the Indian Ocean by falsely asserting that refugees had thrown children into the sea]: (a) secrecy, lying, spin, unsubstantiated assertions and public servant intimidation; (b) dishonest, politics-driven, irrational analysis e.g. the scientific absurdity from leading officials that "there is no evidence that children were not thrown overboard"; and (c) no sensible systemic change but "race and fear" politics and concentration camps for indefinite detention of uncharged adult and child refugees.
Subsequent hysteria over 9/11 (3,000 innocent civilians murdered, assertedly by non-state terrorists from a jihadist organization previously supported and funded for a dozen years by US state terrorists) led to Australian participation in the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq (post-invasion avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality now totalling 2 million and 1.6 million, respectively, in gross violation of the Geneva Conventions).
The Federal Government is charged with preserving Australia's security but is dangerously complicit with US state terrorism - this involvement representing a major threat to Australia's security (as evidenced by the Madrid, Bali, Djakarta and London bombings, the findings of international terrorism experts and indeed the statements of the non-state terrorists themselves).
The Coalition Government (with dishonest and improper support from politicized public servants) has succeeded in emplacing draconian laws permitting detention and silencing of Australians without charge and now demands further repugnant and counterproductive violations of our long-held democratic, habeus corpus, due process, freedom of speech and freedom of association rights - and even the power to terminate the very citizenship of Australians.
Media non-reportage and poll-driven Opposition timidity have substantially contributed to the appalling rise of "democratic tyranny" in Australia. We are indeed approaching an Orwellian "1984" nightmare in which "2 plus 2 does not equal 4", "war is peace", "freedom is slavery" and "ignorance is strength" as well illustrated by mass hysteria over 5,000 Western civilian deaths from non-state terrorism over 20 years versus comprehensive Australian ignoring of 2 million avoidable deaths in post-invasion Occupied Iraq and Afghanistan due to US state terrorism in gross violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Australians concerned with the "terrorist threat" to ourselves and to other human beings should at least get to the first stage of considering the actual data on "avoidable mortality". Thus consider the following "risk estimates" expressed as "annual percentage mortality": 0.00003 (Western civilians from jihadist terrorists over the last 20 years); 0.00003 (from shark attack), 0.0001 (Western civilians from jihadist terrorists over the last 4 years), 0.008 (car accidents), 0.1 (smoking-related causes; 19,000 Australian deaths annually due to bipartisan lethargy), 2.6 (under-5 infants in Occupied Iraq), 5.8 (under-5 infants in Occupied Afghanistan) and 10.4 (Australian POWs under the Japanese in WW2 - 8,000 deaths out of 22,000 POWs over 3.5 years).
The US alliance is the cornerstone of Australian security policy but Australian craven complicity in the crimes of the Bush Administration has done both America and Australia a profound disservice. Australia's Gadarene slide into entrenched human rights abuse, war criminality and "democratic tyranny" can be halted by resolute, bipartisan insistence on rational risk assessment and the uncompromised retention of our civil rights. This has been written in the public interest.
Some related links: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpolya/links.html - Gideon Polya website & http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm - ABC nationwide broadcast - Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality. Dr Gideon Polya, a contributing editor to MWC News Magazine, published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003), and is currently writing a book on global mortality ---