"MEET Haydn Keenan, the writer and director of the four-part Persons of Interest documentary, by Smart Street Films, which started on SBS One last Tuesday. Keenan recently told Fairfax Media journalist Bridget McManus that, in the 1960s, he "regarded" himself "as a humanist and, therefore, probably left of centre and leaning towards socialism"."
'via Blog this'
one has to be careful when quoting the full text of any article!!! in essence I have to agree with the writer with this one, you can question the methods used by ASIO, but the alternative would of been worse for the rest of us, the few that suffered from their lives being turned up side down ... well you have to say it their apparent policy was for violent over turn of the government, and a state run by these people that openly say they would of cleansed their opposition as we have seen in similar societies, we have to suffer the two party system, but what is the alternative, true mark-ism may work but no one even tries to adopt that system, and anyone that gets into a position of power ends up abusing it and will always stuff it up somehow, the minority rule ... we just have to hope one day that we can all live together and be tolerant of each other
ReplyDeletePeter, your comments fail to take into account capacity. There is not doubt ASIO's methods ranged from the illegal to the incompetent. But to suggest that these efforts halted the alternative is simply wrong. There was not doubt that by the 1960s the Left had no capacity to carry out it's manifesto. Any professional organisation would have concluded that they needed nothing much more than a watching brief to keep a check on them. As Justice Hope commented in his Royal Commission report, ASIO had an obsession with the Left. Seen in the light of increasing budget power and kudos supply but the coalition government of the day it throws their activities into a different light. Ads for your suggestion that those who were damaged should not have been calling for overthrow of the state. The truth is that most of those damaged were more like Suse Wolf Roger Milliss' wife in Ep 1 who could get a job as a typist or his brother who couldn't get a job in the art's council because they were in New Theatre. Yes the Moaoists would have given us a state too frightening to think about but they weren't ever going to get power in w middle class place like Austrlia so please don't fool yourself into thinking it was ASIO that prevented their rise.
ReplyDeletePeter Evans I think anyone would would be naive to suggest that ASIO prevented their rise to power, all indications suggest that ASIO was formed because our allies wanted more of an on the ground force with easily recruited locals doing the footwork, other agencies which are prob still active here also played a part, but the classic divide and conquer also seemed to play a major part, when the CPA split, I am more concerned about the state of the spy world now, for long time it has been more about the analysis of data collected, more so by the electronic means now than ever, once that first file was created by the grunts on the ground the analysis of that data began and the connections were looked at, and the information sharing or the lack of it, Pine Gap is said to be a joint venture, but it seems we just host the site, if none of us were left or right we would all be sitting on the fence, which it seems in reality we are, I don't know much about the past or much about what is happening now, but I fear the future, for my kids and their kids and I can only hope that the people in power or the one's that will be and the public servants do the right thing by us, and yes the whistle blowers are needed to keep them honest -- posted as copied from the facebook conversation on my timeline