ASIO watching 800 extremists (Aust)

[interupt]

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,16744401-2,00.html

AUSTRALIA faces a serious new home-grown terror threat, with ASIO estimating that up to 800 Muslim "extremists" living here could be motivated to carry out a London-style attack.

A year ago, the nation's security agencies revealed they were closely monitoring the activities of 70-80 Australians known to have trained with terrorist groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan.


But wait...check out this tidbit

Another major security concern - which helped secure the unanimous agreement of the states and territories to a raft of new anti-terror legislation - is the resurgent strategic influence of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

Security officials say al-Qaeda's "network of networks" continues to inspire, train and recruit new bands of terrorists around the globe, with the internet playing a vital role.


You mean the Al'Quaida training networks arent smashed by the Coalition?

[Kailassa]

1. Such terrorists we have ...

When Australia first instituted anti-terrorism laws, the first two people charged as terrorists were teenage girls who had put something they shouldn't have in a cake they took to school and shared with their classmates. It tasted funny, so everyone panicked and got taken to hospital, but no-one was seriously affected. And now they have "terrorist" on their records for life.

[buzzsaw_23]

2. Powers Pave Way for Secret New World

Powers pave way for secret new world
By Marian Wilkinson
September 28, 2005

Secret detentions without charge, house arrests, even the possible monitoring of lawyers - this is the brave new security world embraced by Australia's leaders as a necessary evil in the fight against terrorism.

<snip>

But a line in the leaders' communique will no doubt unnerve many Muslims. Suspects picked up for preventive detention will, as a safeguard, be able to contact their family and their employer "solely for the purposes of letting them know they are safe, but are not able to be contacted for the time being".

This detail, released hours after the news conference was over, was the first hint that the sweeping new powers the leaders are giving the police forces and ASIO will be exercised largely in secret.

A control order on a suspect that could put him or her under house arrest for a year, without charge, without trial, and without criminal standards of evidence, can be granted by a judge operating in a closed court, under the proposals the premiers agreed to.

http://smh.com.au/news/national/powers-pave-way-for-secret-new-world/2005/09/27/1127804477975.html

[rodeodance]

3. are the aussies awake to this?

[beef]

4. snoozing

Some Aussies are awake but unable to do anything. We're just luckly a sunset clause was put in place I guess.

Most Aussies just keep hitting the snooze button though. How very sad.

[Kailassa]

8. welcome beef :-)

Good to see another Australian here. With our politicians so eager to link the fates of America and Australia, it is important that we share our knowlege of what is going on.

[luciferic]

12. Aust. Law Council Slams Howard's Scam.

Hello fellow Australians (who are not sheeple)

I am so depressed that most Aussies are being so stupid and naive.

With all the compliant sheeple in US/UK/Aust etc. - now i know how
H!tler got away with what he did - the populace were just led around like DUMB sheep.

--------------------------------------------------

Aust. Law Council Slams Howard's Scam.

27 September 2005.

Politics, Not Public Interest, Dominates Anti-Terror Summit.

The Law Council has criticised State and Territory leaders for placing politics and their own self-interest ahead of the public interest at today's COAG summit in Canberra.

Law Council President-elect Tim Bugg said, "Decisions at today's summit appear to have been made principally to provide the public with a false sense of security about the deterrence of terrorism, rather than with a view to sound principles of criminal law."

"The claim that COAG needed to 'give peace of mind to the Australian community' reveals that the real agenda of the summit was political in nature, and that dispassionate and principled policy-making was the loser," Mr Bugg said.

"The Law Council, like the community, badly wants to see the detail of these proposals, many of which are foreign to our legal traditions. We are not comforted by a sunset clause which seems to ensure we will have legislation in place that offends human rights principles for at least a decade," Mr Bugg said.

"The Law Council will reserve its final judgment on these proposed new laws until it is privy to the details in the legislation. But we don't believe in new laws that take people outside of the traditional scope of the law's protection, and that is what preventative detention and control orders will do," Mr Bugg concluded.

http://www.lawcouncil.asn.au/read/2005/2417636439.html

[Nothing Without Hope]

10. Welcome to DU, beef!

Your snooze button is obviously not in use. Looking forward to seeing more of your posts. Glad to have you in our community!
:toast:

[slay]

5. This whole "War On Terror" is BULLSHIT

It's just like the "war on drugs" - an excuse to fund police agencies and give government more power. Wake up people!

[Nothing Without Hope]

6. So Australia is falling to their version of the neocons too.

The hyped fear of omnipresent "terra-ists™" has surely been a useful ploy for the Nazi wanna-bes of the world.

I thought the Aussies had more sense than this. Has some kind of pressure been brought to bear on them by the US neocons, or did they self-destruct themselves without outside "encouraagement"?

[Kailassa]

7. greedy gutless guzzlers, too many of us ...

No, NWH, us Aussies don't have more sense than this. It breaks my heart to admit it, but Australians are wimps. A clear majority have allowed fear of the dreadful things we are continually being told that terrorists want to do to us to completely terrify them. Our "Lying Rodent" is so far up *'s backside it isn't funny, and is determined to show the neocons what a good little boy he is. I've no doubt they could bring enormous pressure to bear, but with Howard the Coward they wouldn't need to. A pat on the head would be enough.

As if the national "anti-terror laws", which allowed for the deportation of Scott Parkin even before they got ramped up, are not bad enough, here in Victoria we have even worse ones brought in. With the Commonwealth Games as an excuse, police can now stop anyone on the street and search them and confiscate property, (no wearing a Rolex in police sight now), and covertly search the home of anyone they suspect of supporting terrorism.

And it gets worse. Kim Beasley, the national Labor Party leader, (our closest equivalent to your democrats, our Liberal Party are the wanna-be neocons), has stated that the new laws don't go far enough. He wants whole suburbs to be instantly able to be isolated and quarantined, to prevent any movement in and out. And this is not through fears of disease, it's all supposedly to stop terrorism.

I don't know why our oppositions are so content to be washed out versions of the ruling parties, forsaking their base and trying to appeal to people who'll never vote for them anyway. This is where I suspect some sort of pressure is being applied. Who needs an obvious dictatorship when they have no real opposition?

[Nothing Without Hope]

9. Oh, Kailassa - that is indeed heartbreaking. I had hoped that the rest

of the world might harbor more wisdom and hope for a better future, and everything I've heard about Australia led me to think the people wouldn't put up with such blatant, baseless stripping of their freedom and privacy. The lies are so transparent!

Your corporate media must be every bit as traitorous and wholly-owned by the government cronies/enablers as ours is. That is what ensures enough terrorization of the people to shove through these fascist power grabs. It keeps coming back to the suborned "free" press as a manipulative propaganda tool.

Orwell foresaw all this; I can only imagine at what his unwritten nightmares must have been like. This paragraph from an op/ed written a couple of years back captures what is happening - the article is well worth reading in its entirety:

http://www.sptimes.com/2003/12/07/Columns/From_Tommy_Franks__a_.shtml

It was the Nine Years' War in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World that facilitated the seizure of power by the world reformers who then took control of nearly all human and social development. In 1984, George Orwell described Oceania as in a constant state of war with a changeable enemy who "always represented absolute evil." These inventors of the great dystopias understood the way governments use war and its associative fear and instability to consolidate power. Despotism thrives on insecurity. Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs puts safety right behind food, water and sleep. Humans naturally crave stability and are willing to sacrifice values such as liberty in its pursuit.

[Nothing Without Hope]

11. Also reported by the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4285304.stm
Last Updated: Tuesday, 27 September 2005, 11:57 GMT 12:57 UK

Australia agrees new terror laws

The measures include tightened security at airports

Australia's federal government has reached agreement with leaders of the country's regions over the enforcement of tough new anti-terror laws.

The state leaders said they would back the law, in return for a promise from Prime Minister John Howard that the measures be reviewed after five years.

They allow terror suspects to be held without charge for up to 14 days.

The move came as a respected think-tank said a terror group blamed for the Bali attacks no longer threatened Australia.

(snip)

[Kailassa]

13. but a kid might put hash in a cake again !!! ...

All a government has to do is keep part of its population comfortable and the rest believing they are powerless, and they are free to do whatever they like. Any historic reference to where these laws can lead inevitably brings up Germany, and we're indoctinated to rubbish the idea that "our" government could ever move in that direction.

However the most poignant letters to our papers pointing out the direction we are moving from have been from Jews who remember pre-war Germany.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

14. Well I hope that Pauline Hanson & her ilk is amoung that number nt

[Kailassa]

15. I've got a little list ... they never would be missed

Pauline Hanson is irrelevant now. All her policies have been absorbed by the Liberal party, and even the opposition is influenced by the voters' admiration of her.

The way things are heading, I'd put every politician and every born-again member of a "greed is good" proselytizing "christian" church on the potential terrorist list.

[luciferic]

16. Aust. Law Council Slams Howard's Scam.

(I think i previously posted this in the wrong place)


Hello fellow Australians (who are not sheeple)

I am so depressed that most Aussies are being so stupid and naive.

With all the compliant sheeple in US/UK/Aust etc. - now i know how
H!tler got away with what he did - the populace were just led around like DUMB sheep.

--------------------------------------------------

27 September 2005.

Politics, Not Public Interest, Dominates Anti-Terror Summit.

The Law Council has criticised State and Territory leaders for placing politics and their own self-interest ahead of the public interest at today's COAG summit in Canberra.

Law Council President-elect Tim Bugg said, "Decisions at today's summit appear to have been made principally to provide the public with a false sense of security about the deterrence of terrorism, rather than with a view to sound principles of criminal law."

"The claim that COAG needed to 'give peace of mind to the Australian community' reveals that the real agenda of the summit was political in nature, and that dispassionate and principled policy-making was the loser," Mr Bugg said.

"The Law Council, like the community, badly wants to see the detail of these proposals, many of which are foreign to our legal traditions. We are not comforted by a sunset clause which seems to ensure we will have legislation in place that offends human rights principles for at least a decade," Mr Bugg said.

"The Law Council will reserve its final judgment on these proposed new laws until it is privy to the details in the legislation. But we don't believe in new laws that take people outside of the traditional scope of the law's protection, and that is what preventative detention and control orders will do," Mr Bugg concluded.

http://www.lawcouncil.asn.au/read/2005/2417636439.html