Demowp

Tag: Australian Security Intelligence Organisation

  • Gloominess and Magical Thinking

    Never allow intelligence chiefs to speak publicly. Their prerogative lies in lying, their reassurance, cool deception. While the attractions of transparency are powerful, the result of a garrulous spook is always going to be unreliable. In Australia, a comically looking individual by the name of Mike Burgess terrorises and terrifies the local populace as head […]

  • Tactical Paranoia: Peter Dutton’s Palestinian Problem

    The philosophy of the dunce, and the politics of the demagogue, often keep company.  And Peter Dutton has both of these unenviable traits in spades.  The Australian opposition leader, smelling weakness in his opponent, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, has again gravitated to something he is most comfortable with: terrifying the kaka out of the Australian […]

  • The ASIO Astrologers: Terror Threats and Radicalisation Down Under

    Bureaucrats tasked with protecting national security are often inclined to encourage insecurity.  It’s all part of the job prescription.  The imperative is understandable if chillingly amoral: increased budgets are demanded to counter threats, however spectral; justifications for existing budgets needlessly bloated are always sought.  In the Cold War, an old favourite was the teeth-chattering concern […]

  • Warring Against Encryption: Australia is Coming for Your Communications

    On April 16, Australia’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, issued with authoritarian glee legal notices to X Corp and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, to remove material within 24 hours depicting what her office declared to be “gratuitous or offensive violence with a high degree of impact and detail”.  The relevant material featured a […]

  • Predictable Outcomes: Australia, the National Security Committee, and Invading Iraq

    Archivists can be a dull if industrious lot.  Christmas crackers are less important than the new year announcement in Canberra, when the National Archives of Australia releases documents like the newborn into the information world.  The event is not without irony, given that such documents are often aged and seasoned numbers, whiskered by storage and […]

  • Fruitless Gestures: Victoria Bans the Nazi Salute

    It took place with hardly any debate, though it interested some parliamentary members at the committee stage.  The Australian state of Victoria now faces laws that will lock a person up for 12 months or punish individuals with fines of A$23,000 or above if they dare enact a gesture.  That gesture is giving, with intent, […]

  • Doing Washington’s Bidding: Australia’s Treatment of Daniel Duggan

    The increasingly shabby treatment of former US marine Daniel Edmund Duggan by Australian authorities in the service of their US masters has again shown that the Australian passport is not quite worth the material it’s printed on. In January this year, Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court heard that Australian Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus accepted a request […]

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