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Malcolm Turnbull now wishes to follow America's lead in sordid, criminal enterprises
by darcy Friday, Sep 2 2016, 3:10am
international / prose / post

In the wake of the USA flouting evermore international and domestic laws, for instance, gone are the excuses formerly used to assassinate foreign leaders, euphemistically once called ‘regime change,’ which of course is an illegality in and of itself under international law and the transparent 'humanitarian' military invasions of the past; we now witness overt military invasions of Syria by Turkey and the USA; hearken back to the criminal invasion/bombing of Libya under the pretext of the R2P ‘corporate oil interests’ and also the blatant theft of Gaddafi’s vast gold and other monetary wealth for large international banks and the use of fledgling ISIS proxy fighters to finally viciously murder Gaddafi when NATO bombs failed. Why bother with excuses State crime has been naturalised today and so the world follows suit as the people have failed to uphold moral imperatives and civilised LAW.

Desperate, bereft and incompetent PM Turnbull

No more need for the pretence of ‘humanitarian’ excuses, the USA with NATO ally Turkey recently engaged in a outright illegal military invasion of sovereign Syria; furthermore Washington had the criminal gall to threaten Russia, a legitimate LEGAL ally of Syria, if Russia dared to bomb or retaliate in any way against invasive Turkish forces and against occupying US special forces illegally stationed on the ground IN SYRIA.

Not a word in response from mouse Putin as usual, who has always acted in Syria in complete accord with international law, while in stark contrast, America and its Gulf State and Australian allies have done the opposite by either bombing Assad forces and/or supplying, protecting and training terrorist forces, re-badged as ‘rebel forces’ sent in to topple Assad

Now we have failed Australian ‘leader’ Malcolm Turnbull ready to grab at similar assassination rights that criminal America enjoys, that is, extra-judicial kills of dubiously selected targets; we should not forget that Turnbull is a LAWYER by profession, and clearly desperate beyond belief to define himself as a leader. However, unscrupulous Turnbull now considers Australian LAW an obstructive, restrictive force for illegal enterprise, as indeed do the law-flouting Americans, the world’s leading civilian killing, criminal nation by a country mile. Well, give it your best, desperate shot Mr Turnbull, as you are already finished as a leader in the eyes of the Australian people.

What a dastardly new distinction Turnbull now attempts to brand himself with, probably in the hope of salvaging his non-existent reputation and a completely LOST leadership. Indeed, to desperate Turnbull LAW is now in the way of overt criminal State enterprise, so lets trash the law like criminal America, after all, laws were made to protect the elite, weren’t they? Well no, laws were meant to serve the nation/people and protect against the sordid and dread-full claims of criminals like Turnbull and the many that inhabit Washington.

The rest is clearly spelled out in the following article, however, we should note that flouting laws applies only to criminal corporate-serving governments -- give morality and the LAW it’s due criminal leaders hampered by it; and we, the people, may soon insist on enforcing laws, regardless of who decides its their sole right to break them, every criminal makes similar excuses. Malcolm Turnbull has now plummeted to the lowest point of his rather hopeless career:

Australia Targets Daesh-ISIS “With [extra-judicial] Lethal Force” at Home and Abroad
by Dr. Binoy Kampmark - RMIT

They [the Australian Defence Forces] will be able to target Daesh at its core – joining with our coalition partners to target and kill a broader range of Daesh combatants – which is ‘consistent’ with international law. Malcolm Turnbull, Sep 1, 2016

The oldest political trick of a leader in domestic strife is to emphasise the unholy nature of a threat from without. When the polls are low, nothing provides quite the necessary panacea than a military action, or promise of action, on a scale deemed exceptional.

The statement on national security delivered by Australia’s Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, to Parliament on Thursday was a recycling effort in large part. It also had its familiar distortions about a security environment that has been fluffed, sexed and altered to a point suggesting we are bracing for Dante’s Inferno.

For a leader who had miscalculated so comprehensively about an election he hoped would secure him a comfortable majority, he is battling a Parliament opposed to him in both chambers on key points on domestic policy. The opposition Labor party is menacing on the other side of the chamber, merely a few seats away from forming government. Important, then, to draw upon the security and terrorist card.

What is odd about the statement is that it stresses a string of successes against Islamic State by Coalition forces, of which the 400-member Australian Defence Force Air Task Group forms a part, while insisting that they pose a greater threat than ever. “Thanks to the efforts of the Iraqi armed forces and their Coalition partners, including the ADF, Daesh has lost close to half of the territory it held in Iraq and up to 20 per cent of its territory in Syria.”

Failed paternalism also makes its cameo appearance. Foreign forces are present to “assist Iraq take responsibility for its own security and provide security for Iraq’s citizens as they return to their cities.” (Where has Turnbull been during his short stint as PM?) The continual nonsense here is that neither training, beefing up, nor modernising moves have had much purchase in an environment fluid to meddling and influence by a range of agents. The very existence of Islamic State attests to that fact.

Yet, the struggle continues. “We must target Daesh at its base. And with lethal force. No exceptions.” Such an absolutist line proved to be a precursor to cutting corners and suspending inconvenient limitations on the rules of engagement. What, in other words, had been hampering the Australian forces? The answer: Australia’s domestic law, which had created a “legal anomaly”.

Prior to the speech, roughly prepared notes from the defence forces were also made available to the press about what effectively amounted to a freeing up for Australian deployment on the battlefield against a broader range of targets of its own choosing. For Chief of Defence Force Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin, the issue of defeating the Islamic State was a crudely military affair, a logistical effort that has been stifled by the dictates of law.

Accordingly, “over the last few months, as we’ve developed our targeting as Daesh has evolved, it’s become obvious to us that there is a difference between international law and domestic law in what we can and can’t do.” That onerous limitation being that “under domestic law, we can only target those Daesh forces that are taking a direct and active part in hostilities.” (Such inconvenience!) Supporting networks and associates were outside that purview.

This reading suggests that Binskin finds laws of a certain sort rather problematic, a string to be cut to enable his forces to get the job done. At best, he is seeking the law that provides greatest utility and scope to target individuals deemed, in the absence of legal or judicial assessment, associates or enemies who can be terminated. This would also entail killing Australian citizens, a point that brings Canberra more into line with Washington’s lethal strategy.

Turnbull was keen to supply Binskin with dispensation from such legal anomalies. The government had “reviewed its policy on targeting enemy combatants”. Curative amendments were being made to the Commonwealth Criminal Code harmonising domestic laws with international norms.

Domestically, Turnbull promised to run with his plan to bring in the maligned system of indefinite incarceration of high risk terrorist offenders, modelled on a suite of other pernicious laws in Australia that target sex offenders and mental patients. The reason for this needless bit of bruising of citizen’s rights has been occasioned by the fiction that Australia has been witness to “three terrorist attacks” in recent years. The flimsy ground cited by the prime minister is that “in each case the attacker claimed allegiance to or was inspired by Daesh.”

Even in school debating, this would rank as a failing point. Merely uttering religious oaths, and asserting some inspiration to a distant organisation hardly counts in making a hardened foot soldier of the cause. The Sydney “siege”, more accurately termed a hostage crisis, involved Man Haron Monis, an ill man swimming in doubt, angst and a good deal of mental distress. His flirtation with Islamic State barely counted – he had been flirting with virtually every other sect and doctrine imaginable.

What is dangerous in Turnbull’s suggestion is that fantasies of Islamic State haunting the land are suitable for legislative action, the result of which is to enlarge the powers of the executive while keeping the judiciary out in the cold. The priorities of “administrative” justice, emphasising security and welfare of society, prevail over those of individual liberties.