Source: Third Eye - A Newsletter for People who Hate
the News at
http://www.geocities.com/the_third_eye_website/
Feel Safe, Sport?
A week before they begin, the Sydney
Olympics seem
already to have left Australia a
lasting legacy, in the
form of something called the Defence
Legislation
Amendment Bill. The new law,
introduced into Federal
Parliament by John Howard’s ruling
Liberal Party and
passed in only one day with the
enthusiastic support
of the Australian Labour Party,
clears the way for the
Aussie Prime Minister and Defence
Minister to order
the army to ‘protect the state’
against ‘domestic
violence’. Fans of the law claim it
is needed to
legitimise the use of thousands of
troops in the
Olympics security operation. The
law’s use of the very
vague term ‘domestic violence’ ought
to concern
Australians: in the past, both
Liberal and Labour
governments have used similar
language to refer to
strikes, mass civil disobedience,
and Abo riginal land
occupations. Military forces called
up under the new
law’s provisions will have the power
to ‘seize
buildings, places and means of
transport’, ‘detain
people [without trial]’, ‘search
premises [without a
warrant]’, and ‘seize possessions’.
Defending the law,
Labour Party shadow attorney-general
Rob
McClelland claimed that “these
measures should not
be seen as short-term measures that
can be
sunsetted after the Olympics. They
are important
measures and they are certainly
required.”
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"Why is it not possible for me to doubt that I have never been on the moon? And how
could I try to doubt it? First and foremost, the supposition that perhaps I have
been there would strike me as idle. Nothing would follow from it, nothing be
explained by it. It would not tie in with anything in my life... Philosophical
problems occur when language goes on holiday. We must not separate ideas from life,
we must not be misled by the appearances of sentences: we must investigate the
application of words in individual language-games" - Ludwig Wittgenstein
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