>If Mike Chertoff were ask me what I think we should do
>with someone he suspects but cannpt prove and has no
>probable cause to believe is going to commit a
>terrorist act, I'd say, watch him pretty carefully. If
>he hasn't done anything that would cause a reasonabler
>person to believe that he committed a crime -- and
>conspiring to commit terorist acts is a criome -- then
>you have to let him go. If you think he dangerous,
>watch him. Get authorization -- under the Patriot ACt
>is isn;t hard -- to search his house. Tap hims phone.
>Do what you usually do.
>
>Unlike you, Jordon, I don't think this a hard question.
As Pilger says below, competent policing will catch terrorists. And draconian infringements of civil liberties hasn't and won't.
Its obvious that laws which allow the government to lock up people without evidence will result in innocent people being locked up. These sort of laws also encourage incompetent policing. Competent policing is needed to catch terrorists and if you have competent policing then you will have evidence.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
LOCATION: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2005/s1458725.htm
Broadcast: 12/09/2005 Pilger on Australia's new anti-terrorism laws
Reporter: Tony Jones
TONY JONES: Back now to our top story - on the growing questions over the sweeping new anti-terrorism laws forecast by the Prime Minister last week. The new laws envisage holding terror suspects for up to 14 days without charge. Suspected terrorists could be subject to 12-month "control orders" and compelled to wear tracking devices. Equally controversial, a law against inciting violence, which Mr Howard says would, "Address problems with those who communicate inciting messages directed against other groups within our community, including against Australia's forces overseas and in support of Australia's enemies." Well, in March last year, the author and journalist John Pilger told us it was "incredibly important" that US forces in Iraq are defeated by what he called the 'resistance'. He also said that American, British and Australian troops in the occupation force in Iraq were "legitimate targets". So would that be regarded as simple freedom of speech and thought in a future Australia? Or would a statement like that put him in breach of the proposed new terror laws? Mr Pilger joins us now in our London studio. John Pilger, thanks for being there.
JOHN PILGER, AUTHOR AND JOURNALIST: Good evening.
TONY JONES: Now, would you be prepared to go to jail for the right to say that Australian troops in Iraq are legitimate targets?
JOHN PILGER: Before we answer that one, let me say this: there are two very big differences between the situation here in Britain and in Australia. I mean, in Australia, there are very few dissenting voices at all, hardly any, both in politics and the media. You have probably one of the most restricted medias in the Western World. Journalists are very close to politicians. Presumably, that's why the whole question of state terrorism, of Howard making Australia a target for terrorists, has not been debated at all. It's just been left off the agenda. The second big difference with Britain ...
TONY JONES: Can I beg to differ, because after all, here you are, live on air, as we're speaking, making precisely those points, those debates have been heard many times on this program.
JOHN PILGER: No, no, you know the reason you have asked me on this is actually to be a dissenting voice. That's what your researchers have said. But I think that's very important, and it's a very serious point. The second point is - and it's a very important one - is the difference with courts. In this country, the highest judiciary, the Law Lords, have made it clear they're almost certainly not going to let Blair's so-called anti-terrorist measures through. One of the Law Lords, Lord Hoffman, has said that Blair's anti-terrorist measures are as dangerous as terrorism itself. You see, these judges know that in all the years of the - of Irish terrorism in this country, when we had a prevention of terrorism act, not a single terrorist was caught under these anti-terrorist measures. The whole thing was ended in the end by politics, or when people were brought to justice, it was because of good policing. It had nothing to do with these draconian measures of the kind that Howard wants to bring in into Australia. And the difference in Australia is that the highest judiciary, the High Court, is supine. We never hear from the High Court. There's perhaps one judge now. Who will stop these measures? Who will act on behalf of the people as they should in a democracy to not only stop, to ensure that they're properly dissected, debated and so on? In this country, I think there's reasonable confidence that the courts will play their proper role in democracy. That's not guaranteed at all in Australia and that's something of a tragedy.
TONY JONES: I will come back to the question I asked you right at the beginning in a moment, because I do want to hear your answer to that, but let me go back, because you were mentioning the Law Lords and there was a distinct - although the Law Lords did throw out Blair's power to hold foreign terror suspects in detention without charge indefinitely, they did make the point, a different point, in general, they made a different point to that made by Judge Hoffman. And that was, they did accept that September 11 created a condition in which fresh laws were reasonable. Now, Judge Hoffman disagreed with that, but the majority of the Law Lords did not, therefore we are getting, here in Australia, and clearly you will get in Britain, new anti-terror laws after the London bombing.
JOHN PILGER: I think there will be new laws, yes, but they don't think they'll be anywhere near as draconian, anti-democratic as the kind of laws that Blair is proposing. Again, I say - in this country, as in Australia, there are more than adequate laws in this country, after the whole Irish experience, there are laws against terrorism, as there is in Australia. There's a law against incitement in Australia. And those - the prevention of terrorism act, in this country, was proven to be a total failure over all those years. So what these laws do is distract and I go back to the original point. It's very important. You haven't raised it and I doubt whether you would've raised it. If we're talking about terrorism, left off the debate, left out of the debate, is state terrorism. The fact that Australia enthusiastically joined a rapacious, illegal attack on a defenceless country in which tens of thousands of people died. That under international law, under the Nuremberg enactment that formed the basis for international law all those years ago, that is an illegal, rapacious and an act, in effect, of terrorism. Why is that not included in the debate on terrorism, because in the end state terrorism absolutely dwarfs the Al Qaeda variety, which is minuscule compared with the kind of bloodshed and suffering and attack that has gone on in Iraq.
TONY JONES: Indeed, that was the context in which you told us last year that the resistance was necessary and needed to defeat the US and other occupying forces, including the Australians, and the context in which you told us that Australian, British and American forces were legitimate targets. Going back to my original question: that would potentially leave you open to prosecution, because of the change in the laws or the proposed changes in the laws in Australia. Would you therefore be prepared to go to jail for the right to say that again?
JOHN PILGER: Oh, well, that's all very dramatic, Tony, but what I was saying, as you know well, is that every country when attacked has a right to resist. Australia had a right to resist the Japanese in the Second World War, Britain had the right to resist the Germans, and the Iraqis have a right to resist the attack on their country. Resistances are often appalling. They do appalling things. Often, as appalling as the attackers, but the truth is in Iraq is that the overwhelming number of people who have been killed, maimed and dispossessed in that country since April 2003 have been done by the so-called coalition, of which Australia is a member. That's an issue that really is at heart of this. Now, you know, whether I'm prepared to go to jail - I'm always prepared to go to jail for speaking the truth. I think that's what journalists should do. You know, democracy and freedom of press is entwined in Australia. It was the military dictatorship of General Darling that only collapsed under the weight of the weight of the work of courageous editors, something that's often forgotten, that probably our democracy started at that point when Darling was recalled to London. We seem to have forgotten that over the years. Now that we have much a monopolised and restricted press. And you ...
TONY JONES: Look ...
JOHN PILGER: You have asked me on this program not to ask me whether I'd go to jail, you want a dissenting voice.
TONY JONES: Nor am I trying to prosecute you on this program for what you told us when you said that Australian troops were legitimate targets. The point is, you're not likely to go to jail, obviously, but a Muslim cleric in Melbourne, for example, if they were to say the same thing as you, might be subject to deportation or jail under the new laws.
JOHN PILGER: Absolutely, and that's a good point. The general point there is, the cleric might be - or somebody who speaks out, you know, the so-called excuse-maker that you hear now being used in the United States, somebody who seeks to understand what happens, tries to explain it, yes, they may find themselves in that position, but behind that person is an intimidated society. You have a whole minority community now in Australia, as you have in Britain, absolutely fearful, intimidated by the prospect of these laws. In this country, you have the police patrolling Muslim street s now in the north, almost as if they're under a kind of occupation. And what will this do, apart from take away people's basic rights? It will push young people, young Muslims into the arms of extremism. That always happens. It's so counter-productive. You know, any true leader of a democracy should be bringing people together. An Australian Prime Minister should be saying, "Look, we're really a safe country. We're not really under attack. "Yes, Bali happened. That was disgusting, but Australia itself is not under attack. What can we do about it? Yes, look at how we can stop terrorists coming in and so on." But these laws are a provocation. Worse, they are the beginning of a kind of democratic police state. That may sound dramatic, but, you know. the most basic freedoms always go in a very quiet and insidious way.
TONY JONES: Aren't they, in fact, a logical response to the shock that Britain has felt to discovering that young Muslims brought in Britain have become so radicalised, they're prepared to kill themselves and others in suicide attacks?
JOHN PILGER: Well, I think what has happened here, the interesting difference in Britain between here and, say, September 11, was that there wasn't that kind of panic attack. There was shock, yes. But you know, this is a country - this is a city that has been used to bombing, unfortunately. And I think there has been more examination of why, in this country, than anywhere. Certainly more than in Australia. The fact that the connection with the attack on Iraq has been made beyond all doubt, and not by the likes of me, and not even by the alleged Muslim bombers themselves, or those that came after them, but by establishment organisation. Here you have the Royal Institute for International Affairs, Chatham House, effectively saying, as indeed the intelligence agencies have said, that the reason London was bombed because Britain took part in this attack on Iraq. That's why it happened. Now, undoubtedly there are other reasons, of course. A lot has been going on in the Middle East in my lifetime. But certainly as a principal reason, there is a general agreement, I would've thought, right across the board, from left to right in this country, that that's what happened. So it's a debate that has to - if Australia simply swallows these laws, and you have an Attorney-General - who has deserted an Australian citizen, David Hicks, in Guantanamo Bay - at the vanguard of these laws, I think that's terribly worrying and we should be looking at what we can do about debating them properly and breaking silences and speaking about taboos.
TONY JONES: Alright, that's partly why you're here tonight, as part of that debate, bringing some of this debate to this country about what's happening in Britain. Tell us, if you can, how the laws, as you perceive them, are operating if Britain, because we are getting very similar versions of them here in Australia if the Government has its way.
JOHN PILGER: Well, the laws are operating. What you will get in Australia is the almost blanket surveillance that there is in Britain. Now, you know, this has been useful for telling the police after the event that the suicide bombers had been on their way to do their job. But it hasn't - like the Prevention of Terrorism Act itself, and all the draconian measures that that brought in, it hasn't actually prevented anything. And that's the point. But what it does do is criminalise whole groups of people. There's no doubt that since July 7, as I said, the Muslim community in this country, many of them - and I've been among them - are simply terrified, and with good reason. I mean, what catches terrorists, if we're to talk not of state terrorists, and the only way we can catch them is getting rid of them, perhaps tagging them as they go off to the source of terrorism in Washington, but what catches terrorists is good policing, it good intelligence. It's not people running into Stockwell Tube and gunning down an innocent Brazilian electrician. It is competent policing, for which this country used to be famous. That will catch terrorists in the end, and good politics will safeguard the country from terrorism. It will safeguard Britain, it will safeguard Australia. Good politics would be to get out of Iraq.
TONY JONES: Alright, John Pilger. That's where we'll have to leave it. We thank you very much for once again taking the time to come and talk to us tonight.
JOHN PILGER: Thank you.