A loaded gun won't set you free (but it will clear a path through a crowd)

"The War on Terror" has to be the most cynical political exercise ever foisted upon the general public since the Mc Carthy era. Even at the height of the cold war, when the fear of communism pervaded nearly every decision the Australian government made, at least the general public were both informed enough and intelligent enough to reject a Menzies sponsored amendment to our constitution banning the Communist Party, would they do the same today if they were asked to vote on banning "terror"?

The question of banning "terror" is vague enough for anyone to agree that it is a bad thing, I mean "terror", who would oppose such a thing, or murder, who wouldn't want to ban murder if there were a War On Murder. I know this is a straw man argument, to a point, I am just waiting for the moment the Howard Government decides that it is electoral trouble and makes such a thing an issue. Already the banning of organizations is a secretive, near totally discretionary matter, dealt with by shadowy government departments and only saved by the fact that the government was instructed not to make the banned groups list retrospective.

"If a group is listed as a 'terrorist organisation' it is an offence to:

direct the activities of the organisation;
recruit persons to the organisation;
receive training from or provide training to the organisation;
receive funds from or make available funds to the organisation;
provide support or resources to the organisation;"

I have no problem with the laws, apart from them being unnecessary in that if individuals or groups are planning on committing any crimes, they were already covered by existing criminal laws. The laws are used to bring prosecutions that are simply political shams and stunts eg so many US charges

http://terrorism-news.blogspot.com/2006/06/tall-story-of-terror-chilling-warning.html

In Australia there are numerous terrorism related offences awaiting the scrutiny of trial, and if the Jack Thomas case is anything to go by, where he appeared to be given 3 year jail for making the judge a bit miffed at having his court labeled the venue for a "showtrial", rather than his proven offence, how else do yo make sense of a first offender being sentenced for what he was convicted on, passport tampering. If I were up on the same charge, being a first offender, I would receive a fine and that's about all.

I've tried to follow the evergrowing number of persons charged, tried and convicted in the US, simply because the roots of these laws have grown from the scary world of GW, where:

on Gitmo and "the worst of the worst" "killers"

"One detainee was deemed to have committed a "hostile act" when he fled a US bombing attack. Another detainee deemed to be "associated with the Taliban" who "engaged in hostilities" despite the fact that he was apparently a "cook's assistant who fled a Northern Alliance attack and then surrendered to the Northern Alliance."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/16/opinion/courtwatch/main1807212.shtml

and obscene travesties of justice like the Lakawanna 6

http://www.pacifica.org/programs/dn/031204.html

where guilty pleas were coerced out of the defendants, lest they wind up in legal black hole of Gitmo. The prosecution deny this, yet their plea agreements specifically state that in return for their guilty pleas they will not be sent to Cuba, hardly a typical inclusion if the threat was not made.

Almost all the terrorism related charges laid in the US have been tinged with such bullshit, and all have been proudly trumpeted before the press by the Bush admin. Despite the thinness of their case. Lets face it, even without trumped up charges, getting a jury to do their patriotic duty and convict, must be, to use gorgeous George Tennents phrase "a slam dunk." If you have no problems placing one in seventy five of your fellow citizens behind bars (over 2.5 million and rising despite the ever declining crime stats), then throwing away the keys in revenge for 9/11 must be easy, and I do assume that theCheney, one percent doctrine, is the order of the day.

My government simply asks them to trust them, despite a long history of lies and distortion to further their political agenda. Frankly, I find it insulting to be asked to trust the current mob with vague laws which can place a fellow citizenn in solitary confinement for life on words extracted under torture or on the testimony of unreliable witnesses who can never be fully questioned because of "national security". What's worse is that the way the laws are framed, merely ackowledging that you are charged or under suspicion can lead to two years in prison, the same goes for reporting on the matter in a newspaper, and the man in charge of upholding these laws, the right hon scumbag, phil ruddock, had his previous portfolioofficiallyy described in a revue as dysfunctionall" and "incompetent" along with a lot worse. I feel so much safer knowing that the laws upon which my own freedom rest are in the hands of the arrogant tool.