The airline bombing plot and unexpected side effects

I awoke like many today to the news that Police in the United Kingdom had arrested a series of suspects in relation to an alleged conspiracy smuggle explosive devices onto airliners leaving the UK, at least some of them bound for the USA, with the aim of destroying the aircraft in flight with massive loss of life. It seems likely at this stage that the plot is linked to Al-Qaeda, perhaps involving some of the same organisers as the July 7 London bombings in 2005.

There have already been various side effects from this news. Some of them might easily be predicted based on the regrettable previous instances of major terrorism attacks or alerts in recent memory. The stock market dipped. (It was a bad day to hold airline stock). Airport security clamped down, with resulting long waits by passengers and increasingly stringent rules for what passengers may carry. Air travel bookings will dip. Airlines with a tenuous grip on financial viability may tumble into receivership.

There may, however, be another unexpected side effect. Al Qaeda supports Hezbollah in their struggle with Israel. They have said so publicly. But Al Qaeda, or whomever instigated the conspiracy that was disrupted today, has done Hezbollah no favours. Had their conspiracy succeeded in its shocking aims, they would have hindered Hezbollah even more. Why? Because Hezbollah’s field of battle – moreso than the villages and towns of Lebanon and northern Israel – is in the field of world opinion. They seek to blunt, to slow, to stop, and ultimately to defeat Israel with a thousand publicity victories, until Israel has been reduced to such a pariah that any outrage committed against Israel will pass with equanimity in the rest of the world, while any attempt by Israel to confront or defeat its foes would find so little support in the world, even in Israel itself, that Israel will cease to defend itself.

In order to achieve their publicity victories, Hezbollah uses several tools. First, any battle not clearly won by the Israeli military – that is, with no or few Israeli casualties and incontrovertible evidence of defeated Hezbollah fighters or captured or destroyed equipment – is a victory for Hezbollah, who simply by virtue of appearing to be able to fight the Israelis on even terms have eclipsed the professional military forces of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, each of whom have fought the Israelis in the past and lost. Hezbollah need only seem not to lose in order to win, here. Second, any attack where Israeli casualties are inflicted – whether upon the Israeli military or Israeli civilians – is a victory for Hezbollah to their supporters, and to those who may not support Hezbollah but see them as no worse than the Israelis, seems only fair. Third, any apparent Lebanese civilian deaths are a victory for Hezbollah, increasing sympathy for the Lebanese and by association Hezbollah and decreasing sympathy for Israel. This is the battle Hezbollah is fighting, and if Israel cannot score any significant media coups, Hezbollah may well win it. Israel can survive being a pariah in the middle east – it has been one for 58 years. Israel cannot survive being a pariah throughout the world or at home.

But the airline terror conspiracy disrupted today will not help Hezbollah. The public already associates terrorism, especially terrorism aimed at airliners, with Islamic terror groups, particularly Al-Qaeda. Many people will be frightened or inconvenienced by today’s events. Some people will consider how Al-Qaeda’s goals and methods are similar to those of Hezbollah, and others will remember Al-Qaeda’s public statements of support for Hezbollah. Some might wonder whether Hezbollah really is no worse than the Israeli Defence Force, or whether the Israelis are a lot like us, only they’ve been fighting terrorism longer. This may reduce sympathy for Hezbollah, at least in the West, shifting the balance somewhat.

The Muslim Advisory Body

In August 2005 a Muslim advisory body was created, called the Muslim Community Reference Group. It falls under the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA), comprises 14 members, and exists to advise the Australian Government on issues regarding Islamic Australians.

News.com has reported that the advisers have been 'muzzled' (or 'gagged'). Reportedly DIMA has instructed the membership to turn down media enquiries or refer them to the chairman, Ameer Ali, or get the chairman's consent to speak to the media. Apparently the idea is that the views presented to the media have the agreement of the entire group. How does News.com know this? Well, they asked the members, and seven of them said so, speaking on condition of anonymity. Notwithstanding the humour of the media reporting that the group has told them that they are not supposed to talk to the media, is this news?

I don't think so. I work for the government. My position involves access to information which is covered by the Privacy Act. My department's policy is that I should not speak to the media, and that if I receive an enquiry from the media, I should refer them to my department's spokespeople. The reasons why I have been instructed not to speak to the media are different to the reasons for the instructions given to the members of the Muslim Community Reference Group not to speak to the media. What might those reasons be?

To me it seems likely that the government would prefer that members of the group who hold controversial or dissenting views not publicise them - especially given that, as events in recent months have shown, the publication of controversial views relating to Islamic issues can result in civil unrest, damage to property, or even loss of life. The group does not exist to expose the government's policies or actions that relate to Muslim Australians. It exists to advise the government. The members are no doubt free to speak their minds, including speaking to the media, within the boundaries of the law, but it is not unreasonable for the goverment to try to avoid media debacles, whether for political reasons or to avoid loss of innocent life.

Microsoft and the European Commission

After being presented with a fine of 2 million euros per day of noncompliance with the ruling of the European Commission (currently under appeal), Microsoft is the subject of a new anti-trust complaint to the European Commission by the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) - a concerted front representing IBM, Oracle, Sun, Nokia, RealNetworks and others. According to Australian IT the new complaint relates to anti-competitive behaviour by Microsoft, such as the Microsoft Office software that does not permit rivals to interoperate properly with the Windows OS.

My eyebrows went up last year at the sheer size of the fine issued to Microsoft, and the daily increment. Is must be, I imagine, be a very effective way to compel rapid compliance. I can't help but think however that the fine is tailored to Microsoft as respondent. Would anti-competitive behaviour by a Flemish cheeseware manufacturer with a yearly gross of $1 million receive a fine like that? I think not. So the fine is tailored to the subject, not to the offence, which does not strike me as fair.

We all like to root for the underdog, meaning against the overdog. There is no dog more over than Microsoft in the software industry. But anti-trust actions are chary things. In business, the company that is better at doing business makes more money and can grow faster. True, unethical practices can also boost a company. But it does not automatically follow that a company that does better than all others in its industry is using unethical practices. I suspect the primary reason rival companies oppose Microsoft through litigation is because they are rivals, and because it is a cost-effective way for them to restrain Microsoft's success and thus optimise their own opportunities. I would rather see businesses succeed by doing successful business, rather than by tripping the runners in front of them. And the European Commission is not exactly a criminal court. It is simply ruling whether Microsoft's legal business practices are damaging to the industry as a whole.

Microsoft has produced the most widely employed operating system for personal computers. They have pursued a policy of integrating applications with their operating system, which makes it difficult to opt-out of using the Microsoft application and using a rival application instead - for example, Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE), the Microsoft web browser, is an integral part of the Windows desktop now. You can install another browser, but you can't get rid of IE - and many people will use it rather than trouble themselves with finding another. Media Player is another example. Microsoft Office. The list goes on. Microsoft might have intentionally pursued this policy to squeeze out rivals - companies that make money by producing applications that work in the Microsoft operating system, much like non-Toyota parts for your Toyota Corolla - but they might also have pursued it entirely, or at least primarily, because integration is the direction in which personal computer software is evolving.

It seems to me that the position of the members of the ECIS is perhaps like that of companies manufacturing parts for another company's car. Do such companies have a right to demand that cars be made in a certain way to ensure that the parts they sell will not become obsolete?

Microsoft is faced, if they cannot win a legal challenge, with either modifying their software to fit the ruling of the European Commission (a task which may cost a huge amount of money), or perhaps being forced to withdraw from the European market. The ECIS is presumably betting on the former, since without Microsoft operating systems in which their applications can be installed, they might have to - well, they might have to produce software that works in a non-Microsoft operating system, or produce one of their own. And how could that possibly be fair?

Drugs and Terrorism in the Australian News

Some responses to law-enforcement-related news articles today:

The Bulletin with Newsweek, 28 February: The Road To Hell

An excellent overview of the Bali 9 investigation and the members of that ill-fated criminal syndicate, concentrating (for once) not on hystrionics outside the courtroom or on tearful relatives, but on the events that led to the arrests, and the backgrounds of the now-convicted offenders.

"They never get the real ringleaders, just the little people. The nebulous Mr Big remains free while nine of his foot soldiers languish in Bali's Kerobokan prison, seven of them for life, two of them for death. It is always the way, in politics, war and crime.But what if there is no one hiding in the shadows, just a core of senior little people who have already been caught? And what if this "major organised crime gang", which police have actually described as having "tentacles", is in fact just a big bunch of minor thugs and losers from the wrong end of town?"

The author reveals some fascinating nuggets of information which cast the Bali 9 in a far different light than that in which they have been seen in recent months. Rather than being innocents blackmailed into compliance by an unknowable Mr Big, most had criminal records (Stephens and Lawrence were due to face court in Gosford for car theft; Czugaj reportedly has 14 minor dishonesty convictions; Rush is an intravenous drug user with a history of small-time drug and theft convictions). Lawrence claims Chan was the origin of the threats to kill the mules and their families; Chan was employed at the same Sydney company as Lawrence, Norman and Stephens. Lawrence, Nguyen and Norman reportedly had already brought heroin into Australia the same way once before in 2003, and there had been a second attempt aborted because the heroin had been sold by the supplier to a higher bidder.

Another interesting point concerns suggestions made by some (including letters in today's papers) that the decision of the AFP to provide intelligence regarding the presence of the drug traffickers in Bali to the Indonesian Police prevented the heroin from being traced to distributors in Australia. Apart from the (to me) obvious point that with drug investigations, one ideally wishes to trace the network in the direction of the supplier, not in the direction of the users, Toohey makes clear that the AFP information named other persons than the Bali 9. Some were believed to be potential mules who did not make the trip to Bali. Six people have since been arrested in Australia in connection with the case, have been charged with conspiracy to import, and will face committal in April. Toohey quotes AFP commissioner Keelty as saying that the AFP is not through charging people yet.

The article does not deal with the ethical or moral issue of whether the AFP should have provided the intelligence to the Indonesian Police, given that it was possible that a death penalty might be awarded, as has been the case for Chan and Sukumaran. (For discussion of this point, prior to the convictions, see my earlier post.) This is no longer a legal issue; lawyers representing two of the Bali 9 have made this argument in court in Australia, and the judges' decision was that the AFP's actions had been within the law and in accordance with their duties; and further that the AFP did not have a duty of care to protect would-be criminals from their own actions. In the words of one judge, "They are the authors of their own fates."

On an entirely different trial: the Australian trial of Joseph Thomas on charges of knowingly receiving funds from a terrorist organisation (Al-Qaeda), intentionally providing resources to a terrorist organisation (Al-Qaeda), and possessing a falsified Australian passport.

Todays reports in The Age and the Australian (I could not find the article in their online edition) focus on a statement by Thomas' lawyer Lex Lasry that the trial is a 'trophy trial' intended to show 'how hard Australian Federal Police were fighting to counter terrorism.' Lasry's unfounded suggestion aside, reports seem to indicate that there is thin evidence against Thomas.

True, Thomas did admit attending an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. True, Thomas did admit accepting a plane ticket home and US$3500 cash from Khaled bin Attash, a man who claimed to be a close associate of Bin Laden. Based on those admissions it seems likely that Thomas was, at the very least, a potential terrorist. Other points made underscore the difficulty of obtaining evidence to obtain a criminal conviction in this kind of matter: according to Lasry, the AFP failed to trace a money trail for the cash given to Thomas, so it is not clear that the funds constitute receiving funds from a terrorist organisation. Also according to Lasry, the AFP has failed to prove that bin Attash is linked to Al-Qaeda.

If accurate, reports may indicate that the charges levelled at Thomas were premature. Perhaps it would have been better to let him go and keep him under surveillance in the hopes that either he would incriminate himself or identify links to other potential terrorists. It seems likely that Thomas was engaged in something ill-smelling - false passport, Al-Qaeda training camp, cash and air ticket from a man who says he is a close associate of Bin Laden, and therefore either is Al-Qaeda, or wanted Thomas to think that he was - but the law requires that the prosecution prove guilt, not that the victim prove their innocence. The maxim that it is better to let a hundred guilty men go free than to convict one innocent man remains a foundation of our legal system, but the price of letting guilty men go free may be higher in this era of hijacked airliners and explosive belts than was once the case. Nonetheless it is a price we must pay if we are to remain a free society.

Stateless man

Here's an interesting story. Robert Jovicic was born to Serbian parents whilst in France, 38 years ago. When he was two, his family moved to Australia.
He's a heroin addict who committed a series of robberies (described as burglaries in this report) in Australia. His visa was cancelled and he was deported from Australia to Serbia in June 2004. The Serbian government has declined to recognise him as a citizen, so he has no right to work or obtain welfare in Serbia. He is reportedly maintaining a vigil outside the Australian embassy in Belgrade - where it is snowing, by the way - presumably seeking the opportunity to return to Australia.

According to the Seven report, a statement from Senator Amanda Vanstone (the current Immigration minister, though she did not hold that portfolio when Jovicic's visa was cancelled - that was Phillip Ruddock) said that Jovicic was convicted of 'various charges of burglary, theft, possessing stolen property and possessing prohibited substances between 1984 and 2002'. Also according to that statement, Jovicic did apply for Australian citizenship in 1998, but was declined on character grounds (i.e. because of his criminal record). Jovicic's father resides in Serbia, and Vanstone states that Jovicic is eligible to apply for Serbian citizenship, but that (as of the date of the statement) he had not.

Mr Jovicic has clearly screwed his life up. All his crimes may well stem from a need to feed his heroin addiction, and they all appear to be crimes of property and drug possession, rather than violence. This would be both tragic and reprehensible in anyone, but in his own case he was - perhaps unwittingly at first - unaware that he was peculiarly vulnerable to the consequences of criminal activity. His family seem not to have assisted him in obtaining citizenship in Australia, although he lived here from the age of two - sixteen years by the time he became an adult. His convictions date from 1984 - when he would have been 17 years old - and as a heroin addict and burglar it's safe to say that even if he had been aware as a young adult of the potential consequences of his behaviour, he might well have continued on this path anyway. He applied for, and was denied, Australian citizenship in 1998 - when he would have been 31 - but by this time he had too many, or too serious, criminal convictions to pass the requirements applied by DIMIA. It seems likely that at this point it was inevitable that he would have his visa cancelled and that he would be deported.

It's not unreasonable that character standards should be applied to persons who wish to visit, or to become citizens of, Australia - that is, where possible, prospective visitors and citizens should not be convicted felons. But Mr Jovicic is one of those unfortunate cases where, while he clearly never was an Australian citizen, he seems never to have been anything else. Perhaps if he had arrived in Serbia under different circumstances, the Serbian government would have welcomed him as Serbian citizen - even though he was not born there and had perhaps never been there (update: he visited for six weeks when he was 17. That's it.) As the situation stands, he is a stateless person - not recognised as a citizen either by the place of origin of his parents, or of the country in which he spent almost his entire life - albeit as a visitor.

The News.com.au report states the bald facts, which frankly make DIMIA and former Immigration minister Phillip Ruddock seem heartless at best - easy enough to believe, surely, after the Solon/Alvarez case, the Rau case, and the controversy over mandatory detention of unlawful non-citizens. The Seven report is a bit different - current Immigration minister Amanda Vanstone's statement makes clear that Jovicic left Australia voluntarily, that the Australian embassy in Belgrade has obtained short-term accommodation and a medical checkup for Jovicic as a courtesy (they don't have to, after all, because he's not an Australian citizen - but their actions may have been dictated more by media sensitivity than by a desire to help Jovicic). Also, the added nuggets that Jovicic's father lives in Serbia and that Jovicic is eligible to apply for Serbian citizenship, but hasn't, does put a different complexion on the matter.

If true, Australia owes Jovicic nothing. He came to Australia as an innocent child, but remained a foreigner through the choice of his parents - and became a criminal, which may well be the result of poverty or childhood trauma, but remains nonetheless Jovicic's own responsibility. He didn't apply for citizenship until he'd been in Australia for 29 years, 13 of them as an adult. By the time he chose to apply for citizenship, he no longer fit the criteria - due to his own bad choices. He went voluntarily to Serbia - which probably means he didn't go in handcuffs, that being his other choice - but he has family there and, if Senator Vanstone is correct, can apply to become a citizen. His life will be what he makes of it, as it was before.

It's possible that Senator Vanstone's statement is rosier than the truth, though based on the reports I've read it's not possible to know. Perhaps Jovicic came from a broken home, is a prisoner of his heroin habit, has no relationship with his father or his relatives in Serbia, and perhaps he can't really get Serbian citizenship. If that's true, he's a victim, prosecuted when he should have been helped, stripped of citizenship in any country, trapped in a strange land, denied welfare or work.

The harsh moral of the story is this: in this world we have a short list of people who will help us when we need it. Friends, family, maybe our government if we're lucky, a few charity agencies. Help from strangers is so rare as to be a dream, like winning the lottery. Drug addiction is a quick route to alienating the people who will help you out of love. Crime is a quick route to making yourself ineligible for aid from official sources. And if you live in a country where you're not a citizen, for goodness' sake either make sure you follow the local rules, or have someplace else to live. Because you may well need it.

Update 09 March 2006: Jovicic has been permitted to return to Australia. Media attention and public opinion has probably had more to do with the government's decision than any ethic consideration, but then governments are like infants: they are entirely self-absorbed and have no morals, until they're taught to treat others with respect. Unlike infants, governments usually need to be taught over and over. Hopefully the Department of Immigration will, with this case in mind, actually weight the ethics of deporting persons with no other citizenship or with no ties to another country.

Policing and the Death Penalty

Brisbane's Sunday Mail of 06 November 2005 featured, under Jim Soorley's byline, an editorial titled "Police sentenced Bali kids to death". I can't find it on the Sunday Mail's web site, but here are a couple of excerpts:

It is now very clear to all who have followed the story of the Bali Nine that our federal police sold nine young Australians down the tube.

If any of the Bali Nine end up facing a firing squad for this crime, the AFP will have young Aussie blood on its hands.

Readers will likely recall that the Bali Nine are nine Australians arrested in Bali, Indonesia for possession of large quantities of heroin or for conspiracy. The arrests were made as the offenders were at Denpasar airport preparing to fly to Australia, some of them with kilograms of heroin in packages strapped to their bodies under their clothes.

In literal terms, if the Bali Nine are sentenced to death, it will be by an Indonesian court. Soorley is extending causality, suggesting that without the assistance of the AFP, Indonesian authorities would not have arrested the Bali 9, and that they would not now be awaiting a possible death sentence.

If you're going to extend the chain of causality, why not extend it a little further? The "Aussie kids" - a lovely emotive term that, they're all young adults - have been sentenced to death by their own choice to become involved in heroin smuggling. They have claimed that they faced threats of harm to themselves or their family if they didn't participate, and these claims may even be true, but if so they don't excuse their acts - they had a choice, and the better choice would have been to talk to the police. I would go so far as to say that the "Aussie kids" have been sentenced to death by whomever it was that organised the smuggling operation.

Part of the AFP's recent successes in combating international drug crime is down to the AFP's strategy of close engagement with the Police agencies of neighbouring countries. Many of the countries in the region still retain the death penalty and are likely to continue to do so for some years. This fact should not be permitted to hamstring Police efforts to detect and catch criminals.

If any of the Bali 9 are executed, by Soorley's logic, the hangman's hands will be many - the Indonesian courts, the Indonesian customs and Police, Australian Police, but also the Bali 9 themselves and whomever recruited them for their short careers as drug mules.

The death penalty is no longer supported in Australia, but many of our foreign neighbours don't agree. An argument could be made for selective international cooperation based on the likelihood of a death sentence in the event of a conviction. Ultimately, however, the decision as to whether the death penalty should be applied is one for each nation's people. A policy of refusing to cooperate in potential death penalty cases would be cutting off our nose to spite our face - failure to cooperate would likely result in persons responsible for major crimes in Australia remaining at large, and the refusal would not be likely to change other countries' positions regarding the death penalty.

Indonesia has responsibility for sentencing those Aussie kids to death, if it should come to that. That's their decision. The Bali 9's decision was to risk the penalties in Indonesia and Australia. Soorley's decision was to denigrate the AFP for their efforts in fighting transnational crime by painting them as executioners.

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