a real live stinker

Comrades,

I don't intend to bang on [well, not for too long] about the AFP suddenly becoming interested in the filing cabinets of journo's. I have to fess up to a conflict of interest here, because I is one. I'm as precious as any of them. I'll leave it up to the editors of that august journal, the New York Times, to tease out at arm's length the totalitarian aspects of this particular threat to the Miracle of Democracy in a joint that has been described as "the world's most secretive democracy". If there's one thing that the Yanks are good at, it's plain speakin':

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/06/opinion/australia-journalists-police-raids.html?te=1&nl=nyt-australia&emc=edit_aust_20190607


If pollies, spooks, and the cops can all use informers with complete impunity, and journo's can't, then there's something very wrong. Before there were such things as Degrees in Journalism, I was trained on the job back-in-the-day to sniff out even the slightest whiff of stink, in the hope of getting a top scoop with a real good one that's rotting from the head down. No wonder they used to call us hacks "blowies", as in blowflies; always hanging around dead meat. Official misconduct is just grist for the mill for us. The current imbroglio has got absolutely nothing to do with 'national security', whatever that is. That's a very very convenient cop out.  Just as a for instance, what on earth is ScoMo thinking about the Defence Signals Directorate? - who have no business or interest whatsoever in domestic affairs, for Chrissake. That's ASIO's job, ScoMo! Hello? The demarcation is very clear. Does the PM really think there is an organised military threat from within? And what the hell ASIS is up to is anyone's guess, because nobody knows. Australia has had no less than three secret spy agencies since WWII, when others went with one, to wit, the CIA and the KGB. WTF?

And do tell me the ABC poking around the story of the Defence Dept. investigation of 'possible' Australian war crimes in Afghanistan is not of public interest. C'mon, boys, it's not like 'Nam anymore, where whatever happened in 'Nam, stayed in 'Nam. There are rules. There are witnesses who clearly know and will say under oath that there have been plain bloody murderers in the ranks of the SAS. Seems to me there is little question prima facie that innocent unarmed civilians were killed - with intent, and that's the important point here - and, excuse me, but under the rules of warfare, it's not a matter of "degree". People die, accidents do happen, civilian casualties are a regular feature of military conflict, but murder is murder, and that's that. And that's not even accounting for the allegations of the cutting off of dead enemy hands or the brutal mistreatment of POWS, or the bullying of troopers and the cover-ups of the above, or a VC being involved in a very active campaign to legally threaten to discredit his creditable accusers. What is the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force waiting for? What is he afraid of? Who is pulling the strings here? Who is the shadow puppet master? Why the secrecy? Why not just throw the weight of evidence to an open public court-martial made up of the highest ranking military legal minds in the country, let reporters report on it, and let the Judge-Advocate decide whether to send them to a jury trial or not? Or a committal hearing, or another bloody Royal Commission. I don't care. There's always the "fog of war" defence, which a jury may very well accept.

But don't hold yr breath. Far too controversial. Why everything is being conducted behind closed doors just opens another Pandora's Box. There are dark forces at work here, and it's a real live stinker. Believe you me. Memo to AFP: That's why the ABC is interested in it. The smell is not right. Oh, no siree. I'd like to see how the cops would go recommending Ita Buttrose to the DPP for prosecution, because that's where the buck stops, I'm afraid, at the top. The journo's are just her hard hacking minions, answerable to no-one except their boss. The Press? We are entitled.

Please don't get me started on former ACT Attorney-General, Bernard Collaery, and his client Witness K being criminally charged over revealing that Australia had illegally bugged the East Timor Govt's Cabinet room in Dili during crucial talks over gas and oil reserves 15 years ago; plainly a badly botched job by dodgy Australian spooks trying to get the edge over the long-suffering Timorese as they went about robbing them dead-set blind, on behalf of rapacious multi-national vested interests. Under the state secrets arrangements they could have even been charged for revealing they've been charged. They had to get an MP to do that for them under parliamentary priveledge. It's effectively destroyed both men's lives, and I sincerely hope and believe that when that one gets to a court of law next month for mention, they appear with a phalanx of right-minded QC's acting pro bono to defend them in perhaps the most outrageous prosecution in living memory. And when they are acquitted, they go the Govt. hard, very hard, for compo. See, you did get me started. Quite obviously it's a subject close to my heart, and it makes my blood boil.

It's very unsettling when Our Great and Glorious Leader says “it never troubles me that our laws are being upheld” when he's in charge of the laws he wants upheld, when it suits him. ScoMo is entirely disinterested in law reform, unless it's to further enrich his mates or ever more tightly gag and crush 'whistle blowers' in the spurious name of 'national security'. So, will we have to just suck it up and contend with more of the same, and quite possibly, much worse?
You can call me old fashioned and whinge all you like, but I fear that it will be so.