Police Commissioner Bill Keelty told the Howard Government how to put terrorists off the streets, but was ignored. Evan Whitton explains why all English-speaking legislatures put lawyers’ profits before citizens’ safety. Part of the following derives from Justinian 19 April 2005.
H. L. Mencken observed in 1920: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
Lawyer-politician John (Jackie the Lackey) Howard, PM 1996-2007, had a useful array of hobgoblins. One of his best, in 2003, was that Saddam Hussein could blow us all up with his (mythical) weapons of mass destruction.
(He later said he did not know that elements of a government entity, the Wheat Board, had been assiduously bribing Mr Hussein since 1999.)
In 2003, Jackie took Australia into an unlawful war of aggression against Iraq. Lawyer-politician Tony Abbott, then Employment Minister, did not resign on a point of principle, and so must bear some of the blame for a war which let the Middle East terrorism genie out of the bottle.
In 2005, terrorist attacks in London and elsewhere caused Howard to start work on an Anti-Terrorism Act. The Australian reported on March 21, 2005 that Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said a legal system “such as the one used in France” would be more effective in dealing with terrorists.
Keelty was right. The French inquisitorial system puts away more than twice as many major criminals as our adversary system (and at much less than a third of the trial cost), but Keelty was ignored.
To see why, we can start with …
A history of the cartel in 98 words
1166. Common law begins. Judge Richard Posner said the legal trade in England (and later its hapless colonies) has always been a cartel. Members of a cartel collude to increase prices and profits.
1350. The cartel has every base covered: bench, Bar, Parliament.
1460. The cartel redesigns legal system. The basic function of the new adversary system is to make more money for lawyers. Justice is incidental.
1758. First law school. Judge Posner said “the professoriat” are part of the cartel. Self-perpetuating rationalisation/brain-wash causes lawyers to actually believe the adversary system is the Rolls Royce of justice systems.
Commissioner Keelty might have added that the Roller anally penetrates police and prosecutors, at least according to a form of terrorism, the Sicilian Mafia. Thus:
Italy used a French-type system. After work by investigating prosecutor Giovanni Falcone, a maxi-trial convicted 344 Mafiosi in December 1987. The Mob then “persuaded” Italian politicians to change to something more like the US adversary system.
Alexander Stille noted the result in Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic (Pantheon, 1995). He reported an FBI tap on a telephone in the Cafe Giardano, Brooklyn, on Tuesday, September 20, 1988. The chat was between an anonymous hood just back from Sicily and a heroin dealer, Joe Gambino:
Anon: Now they’ve approved the new law … they can’t prosecute as they did in the past …
Gambino: Oh, so it’s like here, in America.
Anon: No, it’s better, much better. Now these bastards, the magistrates and cops, can’t even dream of arresting anyone the way they do now.
Gambino. The cops will take it up the ass. And [Falcone] won’t be able to do anything either? … They’ll all take it up the ass.
Anon: Yeah, they’ll take it in the ass.
English prosecutors could be said to have suffered that painful indignity in a long al-Qa’eda terrorism trial in 2004-05. While the defence lawyers did nicely, eight of the nine accused got off.
Commenting on the debacle, Melanie Phillips noted in the (UK) Telegraph (April 17, 2005): “In the eight months of the trial, the jury heard only about four weeks of evidence. The rest was legal argument … The jury never actually heard some of the most crucial evidence. It all raises urgent questions about whether the adversarial knockabout and courtroom gamesmanship that characterise the criminal court system can cope with trials of this nature, where public safety is said to be so gravely at risk.”
Lawyers are 0.2% of the population, but lawyer-politicians are 53% (10 of 19) of the current Australian Cabinet: Tony Abbott, Julie Bishop, Eric Abetz, George Brandis, Joe Hockey, Christopher Pyne, Malcolm Turnbull, Kevin Andrews, Greg Hunt, Mathias Cormann. Labor also has lawyer-politicians, including leader Bill Shorten, but not as many.
Taxpayers fund the legal system. They should unite to ask lawyer-politicians: Will you try terrorists under the French system? When they get the Keelty fob-off, they should say: OK, that confirms, whether you know it or not, that you:
• Are members of a legal cartel.
• Are thus obliged to put trial lawyers’ pelf before our safety.
The taxpayers’ union should then menace the lawyer-politicians with: Sadly, that obliges us to:
Vote 1: Anyone But a Lawyer …
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