Written by U Ne Oo on 2005-02-15
I am often inspired by the Darwinian theory of evolution which a four legged animal like monkey, in over the period of few million years, could become a human. Darwin must be a smart fella, he had such intellectual capacity to connect and see things.
I suppose, we may not be as smart as Darwin. But in Australia, we saw the lying racist-rats are to becoming politicians within our relatively short life-time. With this, we are also bearing witness to the, may I say, "evolution of lies". It goes like this.
In order to cover-up previous lies, you can just make another lie. Truth doesn't matter. So long as the lies can be made consistent, that will become acceptable. You can gobbled up a big lie by making a bigger lie, along with throwing out some cheap shots on any scapegoat one could find.
Similarly, a big scandal can be made to be forgtten by creating a small scandal, which must have to be found and corrected. Such method may only be deployed only when the situation does not permit to make a bigger scandal.
As with Habib's Guantanamo and torture stories broke on media, there began mud-slinging and finger pointing. Of course, the evolution of lies in progress, so to speak. -- U Ne Oo.]
GREENLEFT WEEKLY, 2 FEB 2005
www.greenleft.org.au
HABIB HAS NOT RECEIVED JUSTICE
GLW-EDITORIAL
For the last three years, two Australian citizens have been imprisoned without trial, tortured and defamed by another country's government in clear contravention of international law and all standards of basic humanity. On January 28, one of these men was released, without being charged with a criminal offence, and returned, a little greyer and thinner, to his family in Bankstown.
In any rational, free or democratic society, the treatment that Mamdouh Habib has received would warrant at least a warm welcome, support in recovering from his injuries physical and psychological and a determined government pledge to bring his torturers to justice and punish the regime that so abused him.
But Habib's reception was very different. He can look forward to being treated like the criminal that no-one has been able to prove he is. Under the terms of his return, he is forbidden to travel outside Australia. Liberal attorney-general Philip Ruddock has already confirmed that Habib will be under surveillance by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and the Australian Federal Police. NSW Labor Premier Bob Carr has confirmed that the NSW police will join their fellow spooks in Habib's harassment.
Ruddock is working overtime to imply that Habib is a terrorist, who just can't be prosecuted because terrorism wasn't illegal in 2001. This is bullshit.
In the first place, Habib claims that he was never a member of al Qaeda. No court of law has proved him wrong, and we do not even know on what basis the US government claimed he was. Given the number of people still detained in Guantanamo Bay, if the US believed him to be connected to al Qaeda it is likely that he would still be imprisoned.
In the second place, being a member of an organisation, even supporting a particular brand of fundamentalism, should not be a crime. It is a thought crime, from the pages of George Orwell
