APEC : Disaster narrowly averted by quick-thinking Justices

The Order of Australia has been preserved and the importance of individual citizens taking personal responsibility for their potentially dangerous character has been reaffirmed today:

APEC blacklisters lose court challenge
Sydney Morning Herald
September 6, 2007

Four men blacklisted by NSW police from attending any APEC protest have lost their appeal against the ban in an exceptional late-night court sitting in Sydney. The challenge was launched by the men – Dan Jones, Paddy Gibson, Dan Robbins and Tim Davis-Frank – who claimed the ban is unconstitutional… In the end the [three] justices [of the NSW Supreme Court] held that the banning of a limited number of potentially dangerous people from a protest, in a limited area, for a limited amount of time, served the legitimate end of responsible government.

Further words of wisdom…

1) It is to be remembered that the erosion of civil liberties occurred very gradually in South Africa. In 1948, before the Nationalist government took power, there was little difference in the laws and the attitudes of the people to those which you would find in most western countries. Changes in attitudes were gradually effected by propaganda (involving largely appeals to patriotism) and changes in the law. The fundamental proposition was that any person who did not agree with the changes to the laws was not a true patriot and an enemy of the people. Gradually, it became difficult to speak out without being faced with government and community opprobrium…

2) Almost every major reform in modern history – including the much vaunted Christian opposition to slavery – was opposed by both the organised churches and a majority of individual Christians…

3) Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress… Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.

About @ndy

I live in Melbourne, Australia. I like anarchy. I don't like nazis. I enjoy eating pizza and drinking beer. I barrack for the greatest football team on Earth: Collingwood Magpies. The 2024 premiership's a cakewalk for the good old Collingwood.
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2 Responses to APEC : Disaster narrowly averted by quick-thinking Justices

  1. Femmo ratbag says:

    I am ABSOLUTELY LOVING your blog this week @ndy, keep up the good work. Cheers and well done as always.

  2. @ndy says:

    Thanks ratbag.

    It’s better than bottling it up.

    Or as Phil Ochs once sang:

    There’s no place in this world where I’ll belong when I’m gone
    And I won’t know the right from the wrong when I’m gone
    And you won’t find me singin’ on this song when I’m gone
    So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here

    And I won’t feel the flowing of the time when I’m gone
    All the pleasures of love will not be mine when I’m gone
    My pen won’t pour a lyric line when I’m gone
    So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here

    And I won’t breathe the bracing air when I’m gone
    And I can’t even worry ’bout my cares when I’m gone
    Won’t be asked to do my share when I’m gone
    So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here

    And I won’t be running from the rain when I’m gone
    And I can’t even suffer from the pain when I’m gone
    Can’t say who’s to praise and who’s to blame when I’m gone
    So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here

    Won’t see the golden of the sun when I’m gone
    And the evenings and the mornings will be one when I’m gone
    Can’t be singing louder than the guns while I’m gone
    So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here

    All my days won’t be dances of delight when I’m gone
    And the sands will be shifting from my sight when I’m gone
    Can’t add my name into the fight while I’m gone
    So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here

    And I won’t be laughing at the lies when I’m gone
    And I can’t question how or when or why when I’m gone
    Can’t live proud enough to die when I’m gone
    So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here

    There’s no place in this world where I’ll belong when I’m gone
    And I won’t know the right from the wrong when I’m gone
    And you won’t find me singin’ on this song when I’m gone
    So I guess I’ll have to do it
    I guess I’ll have to do it
    Guess I’ll have to do it
    While I’m here

    “Intensely disappointed by his lack of commercial success and unable to write new songs, Ochs was also haunted by bipolar disorder and an alternate personality under the drunken, chaotic persona John Butler Train. After spiralling downward in a long stretch of erratic, self-destructive behavior, Phil Ochs hanged himself on April 9, 1976 at his sister’s home in Far Rockaway, New York.”

    He was 36.

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