by Mary W Maxwell
What’s all this new excitement about our need to revoke the citizenship of dual nationals who become jihadists? Isn’t it well established that once you get naturalized as an Aussie, no one can ever take that privilege way from you?
Well, not exactly. Australia’s Citizenship Act of 2007 lists a few things that could make a person lose his Australian citizenship. One is if the person did something fraudulent to obtain the citizenship. Makes sense, right? That’s in Section 34 of the Act. Another famous reason to kick him out of the country is if he served in the armed forces of a country at war with Australia. That’s in Section 35 of the Citizenship Act.
I presume we all understand that a citizen of Oz shouldn’t be over there helping a nation shoot members of our armed forces. But I’m very wary of the new push to “make law” to deal with this. We have good law already. Monday night’s Q&A on ABC was rather heated, I’m told, with a man named Zaky-Mallah “telling off” a parliamentarian.
I can just see it now. New legislation will give the minister of immigration (or minister of holy religion if we get one) the discretionary power to decide who stays in Australia. Before you know it, dual citizens like myself will have lost our security in the land where nature’s gifts have beauty rich and rare.
Indeed that is probably the whole point. The Powers That Be decided as long ago as 1928 — I’m referencing a book of that year by HG Wells entitled The Open Conspiracy – that all national loyalties should break down. It’s easiest for World Government to do its thing if all persons are atomized. Belonging to a nation is “bad.”
Granted, the latest kafuffle in Canberra, about revoking the papers of jihadists, is probably meant to arouse us about “terrorism in Australia.” No doubt it’s one more ‘proof’ that Muslims are substandard human beings.
(Note: I lived in an Arabic country for five years and thought the people were about as normal as you can get. I even thought the Muslim over-protectiveness of women was an OK habit. As for girls not being allowed to wear swimsuits, ladies in Boston in 1908 had to dress just about full-clad at the beach. And that style may yet come back into vogue….)
Traitors in Our Midst
Back to the problem of divided loyalty. As was pointed out in some recent Comments at Gumshoe, persons of German descent were treated as aliens in Australia during World War I. In the US in 1942, Japanese Americans were locked up for being a risk to the nation. (About 100,00 of them were US citizens. They were divested of their property, too!)
People do get alarmed at traitors living down the street. What if Australia declared war on Italy today? Would naturalized Australian citizens, born in Italy, be in trouble? What if Yolanda felt bad for her parents suffering Aussie bullets in Milan and hopped over there to help them. She then gets coaxed into joining the Italian army. Will she be able to return to Oz?
Section 35 of the Citizenship Act, as mentioned above, says that her papers can be revoked. The wording is:
“(1) A person ceases to be an Australian citizen if the person (a) is a national or citizen of a foreign country; and (b) serves in the armed forces of a country at war with Australia.
(2) The person ceases to be an Australian citizen at the time the person commences to so serve.”
Maybe if the war ended quickly Yolanda would be forgiven, but the legislation is there of we want to use it.
Now consider a similar case, her cousin Armando, a patisserie chef. He was born in Sydney and lived here till age 25 but now, like Yolanda, wants to help his kith and kin in Milan. He goes over there and does not get assigned to a gunner position, but is helping the armed forces of Italy by making cannolis. (Recall the “Take da cannoli” scene from The Godfather).
Can we refuse to let him back into Oz? Of course not. Even if he did hold a gun over there we have to take him back because he is native-born Australian. What if he had killed a hundred members of the Australian Defence Force? Too bad, we have to allow him in.
But as soon as he steps off the plane in Sydney, or makes it as far as the duty-free shop, he can be arrested as a traitor. The Crimes Act used to limit the crime of treason to such things as harming the Queen or the prime minister, but a few years ago we added Clause (f) to the Commonwealth’s Criminal Code of 1995, section 80.1 It says :
“A person commits treason if he:
(f) engages in conduct that assists by any means whatever, with intent to assist:
- (i) another country; or
- (ii) an organisation;
that is engaged in armed hostilities against the Australian Defence Force.”
I read that to mean that even making cannolis would qualify. So although we can’t strip Sydney-born Armando of citizenship, he could be sentenced to life imprisonment.
We also have laws against terrorist behavior.
Why muddy up the subject?
Undoubtedly the new legislation that is being proposed will be a slippery slope. Law-abiding immigrants will end up being told that they must do this, that or the other thing, or lose their Oz citizenship. After all, every hassle and worry in our lives that keeps us busy and/or unhappy is “good,” per the Powers That Be.
The current brouhaha is also useful for keeping our attention off the very interesting matter of what is really going in in the Middle East. (You know it’s not religious, right?)
Siege-significance?
Finally, is the Sydney siege relevant to this debate? I say No. Man Haron Monis had all the stigmata of a patsy, groomed for the role. I believe he became a terrorist by being trained for it. As we are reminded regularly here at Gumshoe, Zbigniew Brzezinski announced in 1998 that the Mujahadin terrorists in Afghanistan were given their training by the United States. Brzezinski is a former US National Security Advisor, so he presumably knows the score.
And every schoolchild knows that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was formed by British Intelligence, circa 1920, to get some handy insurgency going. (I vote ditto re Kenya’s Mau-Mau’s, and with absolutely no hard data on the case! Divide and rule was Britain’s standard strategy.)
We don’t have to continue to act like we think these insurgencies are “natural,” do we?
— Mary W Maxwell lives in Adelaide. Email her at ProsecutionForTreason.com.
Oops. This was in this morning’s West Australian:
“The legislation, when tabled in parliament on Wednesday, would specify what conduct is covered, but Abbott added that it broadly meant “serious involvement with a terrorist group”.
Please define “involvement” and “serious”.
I’m thinking what’ll happen if I attend that July 4 meeting in Hobart on the subject of the incarceration of Martin Bryant. Will I be accused of “serious” “involvement” with “terrorism”? When I get involved with something I’m usually pretty serious about it, and is there a more terrifyingly terroristic terrorist than our own Martin Bryant anywhere on the planet? He shot 35 people in cold blood. (Didn’t he?) (If everybody says he did, then he did, right?)
I have this vision. After the July 4 meeting, I hop the ferry from Devenport to Port Melbourne, and as we near the shore the captain says to me “I am sorry but you can’t enter the mainland; your passport has been revoked.” So I stay on the ferry back to Tasmania. There another captain says “I’m sorry, you’re not allowed to enter this island. You used to be a dual national but now you are only a Seppo.”
Back and forth I go. I may have to spend the rest of my life on the Spirit of Tasmania.
Isn’t it great to have a sense of humor?
Xcept I don’t think it’s very funny. A melting-pot nation that is planning to unmelt is not funny.
Mary, do you have detail regarding the July 4 Bryant meeting.
Who is organizing the meeting?
What is the objective?
What venue?
Ideally, an event that can be joined by people all over Australia in their own communities, with publicity, live on Youtube, could include a greater number.
It would give an opportunity to get on talk back radio to explain the many injustices and corruption in the prosecution and evidence.
No. I think it is on a facebook site called Freemartinbryant. There is also a website that gives free download of Keith Noble’s book on the subject of bryant.
Interesting that definition of treason. Does that mean that Danby and Dreyus committed treason when they prevailed on Gillard to support Israel over the objections of Foreign Minister Carr (as outlined in Carr’s Murdoch-maligned book)? It appears to meet the definition especially given that they were Ministers of the Crown of the Government of Australia at the time.
Dear PB, please clarify. The definition in 80.1 (f) calls for the accused to have helped another nation when that nation is at war with us. Do you mean Israel is at war with us?
I am glad there is a strict definition of the crime of treason, though I also like to see the word applied more generally in conversation.
You may have read my Gumshoe article on October 7, 2014 “Who Should Be Tried for Treason?” or my March 16, 2015 article “Who Signs the TPP Commits Treason.” Since I run around with the letters LLB after my name I made sure to be strict in those articles.
The crime carries life imprisonment. (No one ever gets charged with treason. I assume this is because “they” don’t want people to be aware of the law in that area! But if only one pollie were to get convicted, the punishment could start to function as an excellent deterrent. )
Strictness aside, I am happy for citizens to refer to their supposed reps as “traitors” if those reps act on a daily basis against what any normal person would consider the decent way to protect the nation. We really have a cartload of traitors in Canberra. Isn’t that shocking?
The whole issue could be solved very simply and easily, by DENYING DUAL CITIZENSHIP.
Australia should never, ever, have allowed this idiotic dual business in, in the first place. This issue demonstrates that very clearly now.
Either you are a Citizen of Australia, no matter where you were born, if you choose to become a citizen of Australia, you MUST, (No IF’s or Buts) renounce your previous citizenship. End of story.
How can anyone swear their loyalty to TWO nations ? Old saying, “straddling a fence can become very painful”, has much merit.
However, I also understand, there’d be a huge Hue and Cry over such an amendment as many Israelis also hold dual citizenship and also go to Israel to wage war against Innocent Palestinians, then return to Australia primed with their military training for any task their masters in Israel would delegate to them. These people too, are a serious risk to ALL Australians, and I wonder why they are not also, being taken to task by our Government.
Good point(s).
The proposed legislation is still very fraught with difficulties. It has nothing to do with keeping us safe from “terrorism”, or even in stripping people designated as the enemy du jour of their citizenship.
We support terrorist groups when it suits our geopolitical purposes. Operation Cyclone is a classic example, the consequences of which are very much part of the current scene. Operation Gladio is a well documented phenomenon, and some astute commentators note that the modern version, Gladio B, uses Muslim groups in the same way.
It is now well documented that ISIS is a creation of western intelligence, trained in Jordan, financed from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, armed by the Americans, facilitated by the Turks, and their injured treated in Israeli military hospitals on the Golan Heights.
The real purpose of this endless legislation since 9/11 is to progressively strip us of the capacity to know what is really going on, to close down dissent, and to make the 1 percenters even richer by extending their control over every facet of our lives.
In Australia’s case it is made infinitely worse by a number of factors, including but not limited to, a supine Opposition; a media dominated by a very small number of people largely drawn from three or four families; and a profound unwillingness by the mass of people to recognise the very real danger that our democracy is in.
Dear James, That is a fantastic summing up of the situation. I only want to quibble in a pedantic way with your last sentence. You say the mass of people is unwilling. Is there any such thing as “the mass of people”? I wish there were. I think there is not.
Isn’t the problem here the separateness of the members of Australian society, each making a living, hoping to get something nice? We in Oz often do get something nice. There seems to be a lack of any community goals, or of acting as a unity, a force.
There also seems to be an odd lack of anger towards government. When I arrived here in 1980, I judged Oz society to be quite well equipped with anger, (or maybe contempt for government) at the individual level.
Of course one has to ask where I got that impression. Probably from media, but I cannot now reckon how accurately media portrayed the Australian character/personality. Recall how the ’80s were “plagued” by industrial strikes. I wonder if that was all part of a script (as Dee would say).
This is not to say that I think “anger” is enough. And “contempt” works the wrong way; it leaves one feeling helpless.
So what to do?
Mary, I could perhaps have expressed myself more felicitously. By mass, I simply meant the majority of the population who are, as you suggest, more concerned about making a living and getting by. I think that the proportion of the population that actually takes the trouble to be better informed about what is going on is actually quite small. There is an element of catch 22 about it as most people (according to surveys) rely on the major newspapers, commercial tv stations and local radio for their news. It is difficult to respond in any way when one is deprived of real information on the one hand, and subject to a constant barrage of misinformation on the other hand.
When I talk to groups, which is quite often, a common reaction is, “why haven’t I heard about this before”? My usual response is to suggest they widen their reading sources.
As to what to do? Keep publishing alternative media. Keep telling your friends to read sites such as Information Clearing House; Russia Insider; Global Research and of course Gumshoe News. While we still can!
James, I am delighted to hear that people ask you “Why didn’t I hear about this?” I mean I’m relieved that some people are in the queue to be informed.
When we were preparing our Fringe show I met more Twenty-Somethings than I usually meet. These ones know the score re 9-11 and Martin Bryant (that’s probably how they noticed our Fringe ad), but when i asked them privately why they don’t get involved they said things like “I would rather deal with my job right now.”
So there, we have two groups, the ones who need to be informed (your peeps) and the ones who have set their face against taking action (my peeps).
Plus the ones who, when they hear “9-11 was an inside job,” go instantly into denial. I wonder what the statistics are as to the three groups. It would be wonderful if most are your peeps.
Oops, there is a fourth group IMHO – law professors and judges. I see them turning a blind eye to the shocking courtroom tactics of government, and fascist legislation by our “representatives.” IT CANNOT POSSIBLY BE that they miss the significance. So why don’t they react? To date, not one has spoken out, have they? Best guess (sadly): they are in the game. They are paid participants.
They don’t fit your Group 1. Maybe they fit my Group 2, like the Twenty-Somethings, wanting to live another day happy. Or maybe their brains really do switch them into denial (Group 3). But logic tells me they are probably “4”.
Dammit.