Destroying the Western Civillization

Today, the Australian federal Premier and the handful of State premiers reached an agreement to introduce new and draconian laws to help Australian law enforcers fight the menace that is terrorism.

On the face of it, the laws it seems like a good move, one that would keep Australians away from harm and prevent nightmares like September 11 befalling the good people of the Down Under Country.

But by a stroke of a pen, the Howard regime has managed to do the very thing that western leaders and their allies keep vowing that terrorists will never make them do; change their way of life. Now Australian police can arbitarily arrest and lock up people for 14 days. They dont need to tell you anthing, no explainations, no questions asked. After 14 days you will walk out of the station and back home again without neccecarily being told anything (and by the way if they arrest you at the gate while you are leaving, they could lock you up for another 14 days and keep going on till it pleases them to stop.)

Their are other even less pleasant tricks that the police can now play on anyone they dont like. They can tag you like a cow and track you electronically, they can burst into your house on any given day and they can listen in to phone converations. All this, without getting clearance from anyone.

The problem I see here is that these people have forgotten what it means to not have civil liberties. They are so caught up running away from a bearded caveman (literally) with a few sticks of explosives that they dont stop to ask themselves what damage, exactly, can islamic extremists inflict on their world. Aussies are caught up with such a lovely image of their own policemen that they dont remember how quickly Hitler turned the German ones into the brown shirts and later into the mass murderers history refers to as the SS

For 4 years, Adolf Hitler hurled a vastly more powerful and spohisticated military machine and somehow (admittedly out of his own miscalculations) failed to bring the West to its knees.

Osama can smash building with airplanes, he can even set off a nuke or two somewhere in down town Melbourne or LA. But at the end, it will take much more than that to destroy the west, assuming even, that that is his aim in the first place.

But the west, driven by fear and panic has every bit the potential to destroy itself. Today, the United States, that self confessed beacon of Freedom is running in Guantanamo, a stalin like gulag. They may call it other things, they may make detainees wear nice orange jumpers, or feed them bacon and steak but the principle behing stalin's gulag and Guantanamo is the same. A well dressed pig is at the end of the day still a pig, Guantanamo is a gulag!

I still do not understand why politicians have it that it is neccecary to loose civil liberties in order to fight terror. Deporting loose mouthed muftis and sheiks who keep gushing out anti western hate stuff is terribly comforting to people, but as a device to stop terrorists is totally useless. Real terrorists do not give interveiews on prime shows, and if they have the slightest trace of smarts (and they are smart) they probably keep away from mosques and other muslims as well. Good luck then to the hundreds of intelligence officers busy listening in to countless sermons in the mosques.

The British fought off the IRA terrorists for decades without changing giving draconian powers to law enforcement agencies. why the need to do it now?

There maybe some benefits to all these laws but I doubt if they outweigh the negatives they will bring. Isolating whole communites, heightening racial tensions and worse setting precedence for civil right abuses.

Terror can be stopped and should be stopped. But it will come through tradittional police work and co-operation among law enforcement agencies. Thats how the marxists terrorists like Badder Meinhoff and nationalsists like the IRA were beaten back. Gung ho solutions like Iraq and Guantanamo make politicians look good but their bennefits are doubtful and their consequences counter productive to defeating terror.

As so brilliantly depicted by Orwell, Tyranny does not suddenly befall a nation, it creeps one civil right violation at a time. There are not many things we Africans can teach the West but we know what tyranny is and how it comes about. Might Australians wake up one day and find extreme rightwing militias marching down the streets in Perth or Sidney? laugh if you may now, it wont look so funny when its you wearing the orange jumper.