Jayeless

Yesterday I read about the case of Dr Aafia Siddiqui, who was found guilty of the attempted murder of her American interrogators in a New York court.

Reading that article, it seemed fairly obvious that the case didn’t stack up. In 2003, Aafia Siddiqui went missing, with no (public) record of her whereabouts for the next five years. The next the public record knows of her, she was arrested by Americans in Afghanistan in 2008.

US military personnel argues that they were interrogating her in Afghanistan when she picked up an unattended gun, and started shooting at them. She didn’t manage to hit a single soldier, but they sure got her, and then they hauled her back to the US to try her for attempted murder.

Forensic evidence suggests that the gun she ostensibly fired was never fired by her, nor even fired at all. Furthermore, common sense suggests that US soldiers wouldn’t have left loaded guns lying around unattended where their prisoner would be able to reach them.

Aafia Siddiqui also says that during her five years of imprisonment, she was held in a secret US prison in Afghanistan. This is denied by both the US and the Pakistani authorities, but it is not exactly hard to believe. Read More »

I found out about this issue today through this entry on mgk. The South Australian government has decided that all political commentary during an election campaign must be accompanied with the writer’s real name and postcode. This legislation appears particularly aimed at banning “anonymous” commentary on the Internet, and was passed with the full support of the Opposition. Their spokeswoman did admit it’d be too hard to enforce if they tried to identify political Twitterers and Facebookers, but apparently that was their only concern.

The legislation is absurd. As both weez and the Opposition spokeswoman point out, it is unenforceable. The South Australian government cannot possibly monitor all bloggers in South Australia to confirm that every time they write something about the election campaign, they’ve attached their full name and post code. That’s assuming they give up on Twitter and Facebook, because seriously, they’re dreaming if they think it’s possible to monitor Twitter and Facebook.

So then it would seem the intended purpose is simply to punish people who piss them off. Having a really broad law and enforcing it selectively seems to be one of governments’ favourite tactics, since it means they can get pretty much anyone who annoys them somehow. You know, like how they got Al Capone for tax evasion. Governments want to be able to do that.

There’s no reason why political commentary must be accompanied by the full name and post code of the commentator. This seems obvious. How on earth can a point be invalidated by the identity of the one who made it? If a point is good, it’s good regardless of who made it, and regardless of whether you know who made it. Wanting to “protect” people from “anonymous” political analysis is not a motivation — there is no need to protect people from that.

The true reason for this legislation must be to inconvenience people who want to influence the political landscape of South Australia in the lead-up to the election. Either they might be inconvenienced by having to release this information in the first place, or else they might be inconvenienced by how this information will be used — to take revenge on them somehow for saying mean things, presumably. And of course, no one will be prosecuted for supporting any mainstream party — Labor, the Nationals, the Liberals, and maybe even the Greens are going to have their supporters protected. To do anything else would be to alienate voters.

So what is this — is it that in South Australia, politics is now to be considered the dominion of a select few who rattle off the correct ideas? That everyone else should live in fear? I mean why else would the South Australian government care who says what? I think the fact that the Opposition is totally behind this measure is also insightful — it shows that the Opposition considers itself so identical to the government that it can also benefit from legislation like this.

Media like newspapers and TV can already be controlled through the steep cost of entry — only the wealthiest businesspeople can promote their opinions through those. But since the Internet is truly democratic — a realm where everyone’s opinions can be heard — it seems that fearful governments want it stifled. If they weren’t afraid, why would they bother?

It’s been two weeks since I was offered a place in the course I wanted, Arts (Global) at Monash. I’ve almost completed the enrolment process now, including unit enrolment and student IDs. And by the way, Monash has to be the laziest university about putting together student IDs — they don’t take photos for it properly; for mine the guy at the counter pointed at his webcam and said, “Taking your photo now.” I look like I am a ghost, that’s how white my face is, my head is in the bottom-right corner of the photo, and I have a RUBBISH BIN in the background. Furthermore, this is my student ID for the next five years. Yippee!

Anyway, I was going to write a post about the subjects I was doing, but then I realised it wouldn’t be very interesting. I mean, I think it’s interesting, but my readers number more than just me, so I thought I’d just list them briefly and link to unit outlines for the über-curious. For the curious, the subjects I’m doing are:

First Semester

• international studies/history: major world events of the twentieth century (INT1010)
• history: “the long nineteenth century”, or 1789-1914 (HSY1111)
• introduction to linguistics (LIN1010)
• Spanish 1 (SPN1010)

Second Semester

• international studies/history: major issues facing the modern world (INT1020)
• history: wars and revolutions in the twentieth century (HSY1112)
• introduction to linguistics terminology (LIN1020)
• Spanish 2 (SPN1020)

I am contemplating replacing the second-semester history unit with something else, because it is highly probable that there will be overlap between “wars and revolutions of the twentieth century” and “major world events of the twentieth century”. It depends how large that overlap is, though. I don’t want to study the same thing twice, but judging by the unit descriptions they’re not exactly the same thing, because the history units (both HSY1111 and HSY1112, really, but especially the latter) focus on social revolutions and INT1010 looks like it’s more about politics. For instance, HSY1112 seems to gloss over communism almost completely, and INT1010 doesn’t. HSY1112 focuses on stuff like Nazi Germany, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and the civil rights movement, which isn’t covered by INT1010 I don’t think. So, if they do focus on different aspects of the twentieth century, I won’t switch HSY1112 for something else. However, I am clearly going to be a twentieth-century expert by the time I’ve emerged from this year of university.

I probably won’t study much history after first-year anyway — I’m allowed to study exactly one history unit as an elective for my major¹ (but, again, it has to be twentieth-century history), and I can study history while I’m on exchange overseas, but that’ll be it. I have to take two “global research” units — one second-year, one third — that will occupy the spaces I would otherwise study history. So studying as much as I can first year might be a good idea.

1. I can technically study two — the requirements for an IS major are the first year sequence, four later-year core units, and two electives. However, I don’t think Monash will let me count my units taken overseas as core units, so that leaves me one elective.