In case you forgot, Scott Parkin is the peace activist from Texas who was visiting one of the States of the Coalition of the Willing recently. He had his-self a nice six month visa. He was four months into it when he got noticed attending peace demos. Now, he has been deported to the U.S.A., his Coalition of the Willing home State.
These are Aussie Bob's observations on the current state of affairs down here:
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Australian right-wing confidence that innocents won't be "whisked away in the night to the Gulags" is touching, except that it's already happened: Scott Parkin being the case in point. No charges. No trial. No explanation, as Ruddock palms responsibility off to ASIO with the now classic "I did/didn't receive advice" technique.
One wonders what these people do as they sit in their offices, waiting for "advice"... or dreading it, as the case may be. Possibly they wile away the hours parsing the many meanings of the word "appropriate" as they rest like leaves on the ground, waiting for a gentle breeze of "advice" to determine their direction for the day. Many others have tried this gambit and got away with it... for a while.
One thing is for sure: if the Opposition, independents and minor parties (plus some recalcitrant back benchers) manage to stymie these new, proposed laws and a terrorist attack happens - whether or not the laws would have detected the perpetrators or not - they will be blamed for the deaths and injuries that result. The clamour of public opprobrium against the alleged "softies" will not only result in their political extinction, but will cause even worse laws to be introduced in an attempt to plug the hole in the security levee.
Arguing for a sunset clause is precisely what Howard wants opposers of these new laws to do. The sunset clause possibility is being dangled as a carrot to get the population to agree to their draconian meat. It's what marketers call a "loss leader": a giveaway meant to induce a purchase of something that you would not otherwise buy (or buy into).
Let's look at the meat.
The laws are supposed to be in response to lessons learned from the London bombings. What does this really imply? What would a law need to proscribe to prevent another London bombing?
The London bombings were done by average citizens - young men (one of whom had a family), who had jobs, liked sports, were locally born, and were all Muslims. They used backpacks to conceal the explosives and hired a car to get to the Tube station, from where they set off.
Knowing all this, to prevent the bombings we would need laws that defined these parameters as threats. Firstly we would need laws that automatically made every Muslim a terrorism suspect. Not background rumours, or public sentiment, not just on Alan Jones' radio outrage gabfest... but hard laws. Such laws would need to authorize police to enter any Muslim home - dissenting, radical, jihadist or totally law-abiding (the latter being the case with the bombers) - and search through their possessions, computers, email lists, and so on for evidence of potential threat. Anyone who had been to Pakistan in the last few years would be an automatic suspect, subject to mandatory detention. Anyone found with anti-Iraq War propaganda would be hauled in for questioning. Perhaps even material criticising "our way of life" would be enough, as this is what Howard, Blair and Bush claim is the terrorists' prime motivation. The children, too, would be locked up, "to protect their privacy", or maybe "to keep the family unit together"... whatever, it's best to get them early, rather than too late.
full: http://aussiebobpd.blogspot.com/
****************************************************************** "Only a tortoise knows where to bite another tortoise; if the crab tries, it only bites the shell."
A MOUTH SWEETER THAN SALT by Toyin Falola
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