Nexus - 0902 - New Times Magazine-pages

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... GLOBAL NEWS . ... NEWS AUSTRALIA'S DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, ASIO, TO BE GIVEN UNPRECEDENTED POWERS further boost to Australia's political police agencies, including unprecedented pow- ers to detain people secretly without charge, has become a major item in the Howard government's agenda for the new year. At its last Cabinet meeting for 2001, on December 18, the government approved "a raft of measures" under the pretext of combatting terrorism. It also announced a sum- mit of federal and state government leaders in March to strengthen and possibly restructure the police and intelligence forces. The Cabinet confirmed a plan, first unveiled in the wake of the September 11 attacks in the United States, to allow the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) to detain and interrogate for 48 hours anyone whom it suspects of involvement in ter- rorism or of having any information about terrorism. Detainees will be held incommunicado, unable to contact their families and denie access to legal advice or representation. ASIO will not have to specify a charge or pro- duce evidence, yet any prisoner who refuses to answer its questions can be imprisone: for five years. Working in conjunction with state and federal police, ASIO will be able to have peo- ple picked up, brought before a tribunal and ordered to provide information or han over documents, even if they are not themselves suspected of terrorist activity. These provisions could easily be used against journalists and political activists. According to Attorney-General Daryl Williams, "terrorism" will be re-defined so that it includes an act or omission "for a political, religious or ideological purpose designe: to intimidate the public with regard to its security and intended to cause serious damage to persons, property or infrastructure". The criminal code will also cover aiding, abet- ting, conspiracy, attempt and incitement, with all these offences carrying a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. These provisions are so sweeping that they could cover a range of dissenting politica activity, including protests and the distribution of literature. Moreover, collection, receipt or provision of funds for the preparation and planning of terrorism, or knowingly assisting any of these activities, will be punishable by a prison sentence of up to 25 years. ASIO and other intelligence and police agencies will be given powers to access unread emails, allowing them to act on the basis of messages that the alleged recipient has not even seen. They will also be permitted to share information on terrorism and alleged financial links with equivalent agencies overseas. ASIO will receive extra funding and resources, unspecified as yet, and "Cabinet will give further consideration to a range of additional measures" in the new year. Over the past two decades, ASIO has already been handed powers to tap phones, intercept email and mail, plant tracking devices on people or vehicles and install listen- ing devices in offices and homes. It can easily obtain secret search-and-entry warrants, and physically or electronically break into computer files and databases. This is not the first time that governments have seized upon the alleged threat of ter- rorism to expand ASIO's powers. The first ASIO Act was passed in 1979 in the wake of the 1978 attempted bombing of the Hilton Hotel in Sydney during a Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. The federal Fraser government, joined by the Wran government in New South Wales, declared that "the age of terrorism" had arrived in Australia. That bombing remains unsolved to this day, but it led to two police frame- ups of members of the Ananda Marga religious sect. Sect members spent years in prison before the frame-ups were exposed, leaving all the evidence pointing to the bomb having been planted by ASIO itself, or another police agency. In 1999, the Howard government cited fears of terrorism at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games as a pretext for giving ASIO further sweeping powers. No terrorist activity eventuated, but ASIO's powers—including to hack into computers, access taxa- tion files and plant secret tracking devices—have remained. The government also used the Games as a pretext to pass legislation providing for the military to be called out against domestic political unrest. (Source: by Mike Head via World Socialist Web Site, WSWS.org, December 27, 2001, www.wsws.org/articles/2001/dec2001/asio-d27.shtml) lhe Space Preservation Act of 2001 (HR 2977), introduced as a Bill in the US House of Representatives on October 2, 2001 by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), aims "To preserve the cooperative, peace- ful uses of space for the benefit of all humankind by permanently prohibiting the basing of weapons in space by the United States, and to require the President to take action to adopt and implement a world treaty banning space-based weapons". Note the following extracts from Section 7, Definitions: "(2)(A) The terms 'weapon' and 'weapons system’ mean a device capa- le of any of the following: (i)(IID) direct- ing a source of energy (including molecular or atomic energy, subatomic particle eams, electromagnetic radiation, plasma, or extremely low frequency [ELF] or ultra low frequency [ULF] energy radiation) against [an] object; or (IV) any other unac- knowledged or as yet undeveloped means. (IV)(ii) Inflicting death or injury on, or damaging or destroying, a person (or the iological life, bodily health, mental health or physical and economic well-being of a erson)—(I) through the use of any of the means described in clause (i) or subpara- graph (B); (II) through the use of land- sed, sea-based or space-based systems using radiation, electromagnetic, psy- chotronic, sonic, laser or other energies directed at individual persons or targeted opulations for the purpose of information war, mood management or mind control of such persons or populations; or (II) by expelling chemical or biological agents in the vicinity of a person. (B) Such terms include exotic weapons systems such as (i) electronic, psychotronic or information weapons; (ii) chemtrails; (iii) high-altitude ultra low frequency weapons systems; (iv) plasma, electromag- netic, sonic or ultrasonic weapons; (v) laser weapons systems; (vi) strategic, theatre, tactical or extraterrestrial weapons; and (vii) chemical, biological, environmental, climate or tectonic weapons. (C) The term ‘exotic weapons systems’ includes weapons designed to damage space, natural ecosystems (e.g., the ionos- phere and upper atmosphere) or climate, and weather and tectonic systems with the purpose of inducing damage or destruction upon a target population or region on Earth or in space." (Source: Secrecy News, January 10, 2002, www.fas.org) NEXUS ¢ 9 A BAN ON WEAPONS IN SPACE? FEBRUARY — MARCH 2002 www.nexusmagazine.com