Month: October 2009

Police are spying on us

Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House on an overcast day.
A mega-crim's getaway boat? Or just part of the NSW ferries service? It was suitably dark and overcast at the Dangerous Ideas conference.

David Mutton, who was the NSW Police’s chief psychologist for 11 years, is now a lecturer at UWS in forensic psychology. “Crime pays,” he said, conceding he’d made a good living out of it.

He was speaking at the Dangerous Ideas conference at the Sydney Opera House. Mutton said that most people think it’s OK if the police spy on lots of people because “if you’re not doing anything wrong, it doesn’t matter”.

But then he gave us an example of how a “cleanskin” (innocent person) can be under surveillance for being unwittingly associated with a criminal — eg. the criminal’s accountant or former school friend. He told a story of how a woman at a bar could get involved with a criminal, unknowingly, and then all her activities, including bedroom gymnastics, would be caught on film, phone, email etc and observed/cheered on by the surveillance team.

Also, if you’re a cleanskin, you can be called in and be forced to tell the truth and spill your guts about anything you know (under pain of five years’ jail if you lie or refuse to talk). These meetings are kept secret (you hope!).  “There’s no right to silence,” Mutton said, despite your innocence and lack of involvement.

By monitoring phone conversations, police psychologists can detect criminals’ vulnerabilities and use that to derail them, particularly in interviews.

Continue reading Police are spying on us

Christopher Hitchens: Religion poisons everything

Christopher Hitchens, left, and Tony Jones.
Christopher Hitchens, left, and Tony Jones.
Jones (left) and Hitchens leave the stage.
Jones (left) and Hitchens leave the stage.

He’s an amazing speaker — was the opening address for the Festival of Dangerous Ideas at the Sydney Opera House. I couldn’t take notes cause they turned down the lights and I can’t recollect his whole arguments — he’s extensively thorough on each point, with numerous tangents. So these aren’t his exact quotes — there’s a telecast on the ABC site.

I’d thought there would be argy bargy as I saw some Traddies in the foyer (traditional Catholics) but only the MC, Tony Jones, was asking questions.

Hitchens covered the angles of “I don’t need supernatural supervision to do good deeds” and gave an example of how he likes to donate blood.

Also, he said religious people have to accept that the Abrahamic God took a long while to intervene in people’s history — only 3000 years ago — and yet there had been a lot of wars and raping and kids killed before then. He said that had to be acknowledged, andhe doesn’t buy the arguments: “God’s ways are greater than ours, He works in mysterious ways, his ways are opaque.”

Continue reading Christopher Hitchens: Religion poisons everything

Christopher Hitchens on Q&A

He’s a brilliant debater. He knocked Fr Brennan off his perch (who chaired the Human Rights Consultation and came up with — nothing. Hardly surprising that a Catholic priest would decide we shouldn’t have any human rights charter).

Hitchens is paying a visit during the churches’ $1.5 million campaign promoting “Jesus”, which runs until the end of October.

There were so many highlights — read the transcript here, or watch it.

Hitchens on Mother Teresa: … Mother Teresa was endlessly praised for work that most of the time she actually never did. I went to watch her very closely in Calcutta. You don’t mind that she thinks that what Bengal and Calcutta mainly needs is a campaign … against birth control and family planning. Has anyone here ever been to Bengal and concluded that’s what it really needs? That’s what she was really campaigning for … She gives a wonderful impression of being a charitable person. So what Indians need is more missionaries to cure poverty, when everybody knows there’s only one cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women, which means giving them some control over their reproduction. You name me … a Catholic or Muslim charity that goes into the fields determined to secure the empowerment of women.

Jesuit Fr Frank Brennan on the topic of gays: No, homosexuality is not a sin. It’s a disposition. If you want to argue about whether particular homosexual acts are appropriate for an individual in a moral context, that would require a pastoral discussion with that individual.

I think that’s misleading. The Catechism of the Catholic Church  says:

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex.  Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,140 tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.”141 They are contrary to the natural law …  Under no circumstances can they be approved.

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

SMH public transport inquiry: final meeting

Went to the final public meeting for the SMH public transport inquiry. There were about 260 people. It was the eight meeting and there was security because “we’ve had bruises” when “high emotions” had flared. “Mostly in suburbs where people have read about trains and want to have them.” There was a demonstration of how the sound bloke would turn the mike off if anyone tried to go over their three minutes of chat time.

The attendees included Brezhnev characters, unionists, the Balmain intelligentsia, feisty articulate pensioners, a bloke who’d worked on the railways from 1948, passionate trainspotters, and CBD workers. A queue of people lined up to make comments or ask questions. For those too shy to go up, you could SMS a question to the MC, Robert Whitehead. It ran about 10 minutes over time.

One bloke said Rees reckoned we couldn’t spend on transport cause we might lose our AAA Rating with Standard & Poor’s. But he said the point of the rating was so the State could get cheaper loans. “So, get the cheaper loans and spend it on public transport

Discrimination against Singles: a woman said she went to buy the Family Funday Sunday rail pass — $2.5o a person — but just for her. The bloke said no, it’s $17 for you. She had to pay it. She said four Singles would take four cars, then, rather than pay $17 each. And when a family takes the train, that only saves one car on the road.

I felt most sorry for the pensioners — having to pay lots for various modes of transport, or having to waste their valuable time by catching cheaper and slower modes (often buses). Shuffling around with their Zimmers, and there aren’t enough ramps at stations either. Cruel after a lifetime of taxpaying service. The maximum pension is $253/week each (couple) or $335 single. Not enough to pay your bills.

There were handouts from EcoTransit Sydney that summed up the main problem: If Nathan Rees’s proposed CBD Metro-to-Roseville  project happens, it will use up a valuable corridor which could be used for better transport for “hundreds of thousands of people every day”. So that’s why commuters should be in a state of outrage. “You can’t put rail tunnels just anywhere under the CBD because of deep building footings, basements and underground car parks.”

Worse, the CBD Metro would stuff up existing services so anyone travelling in from the west or south would have to get off the train and get on the Metro CBD to get to Town Hall or Wynyard! Nightmare!

Why is Rees persisting with the CBD Metro idea? The EcoTransits say they have inside info that it’s to break the unions by starting up a new metro-style rail system “that’s privately operated, un-unionised, run with a minimum of staff …” to “reform the culture” of CityRail. The commuters suggest maybe they should run CityRail properly instead, as there’s a high probability that a CBD Metro would lose money and then the taxpayers would end up footing the bill.

There’s also a new law so the Rees Govt can sell off rail lines.

Also, Newcastle is stuffed with a plan to cut the rail line just five kilometres from the town centre and make everyone get off and catch buses! This will free up lots of waterfront land.

Also, when Rudd was giving out money for transport infrastructure — for long-term and definite plans — NSW didn’t offer up any plans — so it just got $91 million to do a feasibility study for the rubbish CBD Metro. Meanwhile, Victoria got $3200 million and the Gold Coast got $365 million.  NSW has ignored about five comprehensive long-term plans since 2001 — instead, it’s more open to private enterprise just catering to wherever they can make the biggest buck. *Fail*.

The commuter groups said Rees could have shown Rudd “shovel-ready” plans for a North-West and South-West rail links, areas with huge population growth, but he didn’t, and instead floated the CBD Metro idea which didn’t even have any concrete plans ready. So we’re stuffed.

The affable Dr Glazebrook is a transport uber expert who could answer all questions. I wished they’d left the map of the transport system on the screen all night, as I didn’t know what was what off the top of my head.

He said Singapore’s railway system when from nothing to brilliant after just 30 years. After listening at the meetings, he said people want: *more off-peak buses;  an integrated ticket-fare system; and more parking at train stations so they can park after 7am.

Dr Glazebrook said: “Sydney used to have 1500 trams — more than Melbourne has now.” And our train system routes are better than Melbourne as we made Westfield build huge shopping centres next to train stations — Kogarah, Hurstville, Bankstown. But we’ve badly missed out with no trains to Dee Why and Castle Hill. The North-West and South-West have no trains and it’s dire.

“We spend $22.9 billion a year on our cars. It would cost $3.2 billion to make a big different to public transport.”

He said the US funds public transport with sales tax, petrol tax and land tax. France funds it with payroll tax. He said there was a four per cent increase in US users of public transport.

City of Sydney Mayor Clover Moore said we need transport to Green Square and that the bad transport is “affecting our status as a modern global city”. She said the council has to negotiate with more than 11 transport authorities (that all hate each other) to get anything done, so council staff have to spend all their time in meetings.

“Singapore and Shanghai are infesting billions in transport. We have to do this.” She said if Sydney were a sovereign country, we’d have the world’s 50th largest economy.

Get your submissions in by 5pm Thursday, October 8, here. Remember, these plans are good for 2030 — so when you’re a doddery pensioner, you’ll want faster transport and a fairer ticketing system. Metro Madness blog here.

[The SMH MC RW  said the SMH had been asked to establish another 10 inquiries at least — “hospitals, and one on ‘Canberra’!”. He said this was the first one the SMH had done in 180 years, so … The fact there have been so many requests is interesting. People are desperate to be heard by their Govts and feel the weight of the SMH is necessary cause otherwise they’re dismissed. What an indictment.]

My personal views on public transport here.