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Thousands of people protested their concerns yesterday that new draconian Anti-Terror laws were an attack on dissent, not fit for a dog and any new sedition laws would strangle freedom of speech and target innocent people.
Under the provisions, jail terms could be imposed on people seen to oppose violence, protest illegal and degrading wars, or incite ill will against Australia's involvement in criminal activities like the war on Iraq, where over 100,000 innocent men, women and children were killed, maimed or tortured.
An estimated 2000 protesters took to Sydney's streets yesterday to express their concerns about the anti-liberty laws.
Similar rallies were held in capital cities across the country as civil rights groups and Islamic leaders gathered to protest against the legislation.
The whole anti-liberty package should be dumped as another HoWARd crime against humanity. The anti-terrorism legislation, which will give police and intelligence authorities unprecedented powers, was introduced into Parliament last week.
There is widespread unease among Government backbenchers and civil libertarians. These orders will be imposed for no crime, control people and prevent people from speaking out or participating in their normal day-to-day activities. The backbench committee and Attorney-General were at loggerheads over issues of no principle in the laws.
The state premiers ought to be ashamed of themselves for not standing up for their communities in that these laws would breach any general standards and common law principals. NSW Premier Morris Iema is well aware that at present his government is being sued over the Community Protection Act 1994, a law that also imposed preventive detention so he knows that legislation proposed by the hoWARd government is already 'invalid'.
When hoWARd played his terror card last week the only way he could continue to validate the serious alarm and affront he imposed on the nation was to have frontline intelligence officers and pro-government media giants prop up to argue that the government had breached the security act.
But this was only to help cover up hoWARd's lie. Then low and behold a former Australian Security Intelligence Service agent Warren Reed said state-based police and intelligence officers involved in covert surveillance of suspected terrorists feared their targets would now go underground.
Reed played right into hoWARd's hands 'or the other way around more like it' appearing to validate the notion that Australia had faced a 'real threat' when hoWARd announce the fear.
But this was just more propaganda and their fears that the 'targets' would now go underground was like 'phantom of the opera', but in a long, long list of lies this was just another blatant lie by the hoWARd dictatorship because no one is able to get to the truth, because it's another secret.
The propaganda message from inside the intelligence system, especially on the front line at the state level, is that hoWARd's terror scare had some validity.
Shame hoWARd shame on you.
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A Shield or A Sword?
There is a consensus among educated Australians that Preventive Detention is inimical to the democratic evolution of our country. Many are those who argue that given the standards of our time preventive detention is an unnecessary evil.
This group is made up mostly of community groups, academics and lawyers who sincerely subscribe to the belief that to resort to such a draconian law to safeguard not only their person but also, the country at large is itself dangerous. They argue passionately that the exigencies do not warrant such offensive and repressive Act. To this school of thought the Act would be a sword in the hand of a budding autocrat who wielded it ruthlessly and indiscriminately to stifle all genuine opposition.
In Australia there is freedom of expression and freedom of association. There are many media outlets and the government and the media giants have the morning, mid-day and evening news, as the governments mouth piece.
The media giants though not officially part of the government machinery; unabashedly and blatantly champion the cause of the government funded by government advertising. Given these attributes of democracy, one would not need to ask why the media giants never asked questions in relation to the illegality of the war on sovereign nations like Afghanistan and Iraq. Or who was responsible, and or what that inference would lead to down the track in terms of our national security. Especially if they could not win that illegal and degrading war or it could take years. Now those questions have been left unanswered. So to keep the terrible lie alive they need to restrict our liberty to combat their fear of reprisal which undermines the communities common laws, human rights, civil rights, democratic rights and their liberties at home or abroad.
The proposition that certitude leads to violence has its easy application in such dynamic environment and in a landscape swarming with political parties and some who are intent on justifying illegal and degrading war whilst living in a multicultural freer society. The easy application is ideologies, dogmatists and bullies--people who think that their rightness justified them in imposing on anyone who does not happen to subscribe to their particular ideology, dogma or notion of turf. Because their conviction of rightness is powerful enough and any resistance to it will be met sooner by force. When one gets profiled then persecution comes easy. Mamdouh Habib was kidnapped, persecution inexorably followed.
If Preventive Detention or Control Orders are enacted for dissent or suspected people the law will empower the government to detain anybody without trial. The law is renewable and represents indefinite detention and other waves of detention will follow unabated.
Yet there are no bombs being thrown any where in the country. If anything, it was only the 'smoking gun memo' and troops off to wage war that occasionally pervaded the atmosphere in Australia.
The opposition party has been bought and dissolved into extinction or used merely to sustain the notion of a liberal democracy. Well-paid losers!
In conclusion, there has been no bomb thrown thus, we don't need a shield to protect us. As a matter of fact, the government were culprits in the war and the opposition was complicit in not preventing the war and one needs to look there for the real answer in preventing violence in our community down the track.
In my opinion the sole objective of the governments Anti-Terrorism legislation is a diabolic weapon to stifle and strangulate the budding opposition because of the mounting frustration of the opponents to illegal and degrading war which, they declare is an adequate justification for engaging in bomb throwing and on that basis then one can be sure Howard is not a visionary but a nationalistic autocrat and it goes without saying.
Like all autocrats, Howard cannot tolerate any opposition.
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Propaganda Monster 30 October 05
Australia, Statutes at Large, Canberra, A.C.T., 2005.
SECTION 1: Whoever, when Australia wages an illegal war, shall willfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to pre-empt that illegal war, or promote the operation or success of the military or naval forces of Australia for that illegal war, or to promote the demise of its victims of that illegal war, or shall willfully make or convey false reports, or false statements of that illegal war, . . . or incite promote, loyalty, efficacy, or duty of that illegal war, in the military or naval forces of Australia, or shall willfully promote . . . the recruiting or enlistment service of Australia for that illegal war, or . . . shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any loyalty, appraisal , appreciation, or validity of that illegal war, or language about that illegal war in the form that undermines the integrity of the community of Australia, or the Constitution of Australia, or the military or naval forces of Australia for that illegal war . . . or shall willfully not count the dead of any foreign victim of that illegal and degrading war, or shall willfully . . . urge, incite, or advocate increased production for that illegal war . . . or advocate, teach, defend, or suggest the doing of any of the acts or things in this section enumerated and whoever shall by word or act support or favor the cause of Australia with which Australia is at an illegal war with or by word or act does not oppose the illegal and degrading war of Australia therein, shall be punished by imprisonment of up to 7 years.
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