It is interesting that a Jewish publication publishes an article that is supportive of the proposed anti-terrorism legislation. The Civil Liberties Association of lawyers in Victoria and Sydney have drawn attention to the fact that this kind of legislation, providing extraordinary powers of search and detention to a secret police force, was introduced only one other time in a democratic country. That country was Germany and the man who pushed for it was Adolf Hitler.

Certainly we need to fight terrorism, but we already have an adequate legal system to do that. This legislation would not have stopped the London or Madrid bombers. The problem with this legislation is that it actually removes the freedom that we claim to protect from the terrorists. Ironically, by framing the proposed enhanced legislation, our Howard Government is giving into the terrorists.

Any government that runs a fear campaign to keep its citizens in check is not to be trusted. I for one do not want to hand my freedom of speech to a Prime Minister who listens more to George Bush than to his own people.

If we are sincere about fighting terrorism, then let us address the reasons for its existence. This legislation is a bandaid treatment at best or at worst another avenue for facism.

Paul Kelly of “The Australian” newspaper - predicts that the war on terror, will be a long-running one. He also predicts that Western nations such as Australia face the prospect of an exceedingly difficult challenge, but a challenge with the military only playing a supporting role

Paul Kelly cites David Kilcullen, keynote speaker last weekend on the theme of “War and Conflict in the 21st Century.” Kilcullen, who has only recently returned from the US as a special adviser on counter-terrorism, believes the US is in a dilemma. It must maintain military superiority to contain the rise of problem states, yet the core threat America faces, apparently needs far more intellectual thought.

Kilcullen’s diagnosis is that two epic trends drive the new warfare, neo-liberal globalisation and US imperialist military dominance.

Globalisation and the return of the 19th century free-market, has created the already, well-known term, blowback. G8 protestors, environmental extremists, and narco-insurgents, opposing the American neo-liberal model, yet the model disrupting all their lives in different ways - the extreme of the protestors ready to fight the US and its allies where the massive military combination is weak, in the combination’s own lodgings and in its own streets by the use of increasingly successful suicide bombing..

Suicidal warfare as being played now by the Muslims, is cheap, difficult to counter and often effective - as also agreed upon by Keith Suter, who in an Online main essay not long ago, cited the successful suicide attacks by the Tamil Tigers, which caused a worried Sri-Lankan government to grant them independence. Also the Americans forced to remove their troops from Lebanon after over 250 American marines were killed in one suicide-actuated explosion. Many other examples can be cited, the more recent one in Spain, causing Spain to withdraw its troops from Iraq.

Kilcullen’s three-point victory programme is daunting to the extreme. A need for a road map to guide democratic societies under assault. However, the debate post-London is so marked by community revulsion, there is still yet a profound strategic uncertainty.

George C - WA - (Bushbred)

Luckily the Wonderous Fish knows all,and has faith in our ethical legal system that is more adept at protecting it's own self interest and freeing criminals to prey upon it's own citizens time and time again.

Terrorism won't be defeated by any self serving legal system,but by the courage and tenacity of those who have the inpiration to be free of this retarded med- evil philosophy.

Our current legal system is worried about losing it's own power base, when ordinary citizens finally decide that enough is enough.

The legal disease is also terrorising our citizens.

The need for very strict Anti Terror laws is underlined by the following:

Tamil Tigers, the main authors of the 'suicide bomb', were also well known for another more insidious and dangerous to us program. i.e. killing of their own moderates !

I predict with absolute confidence, that this is how it (is) will pan out among Muslims in Australia, (not with assasinations as yet) unless they rat out all and sundry of the radicals before they get an irreversable grip on the places of worship.

This cycle of 'radicalization=> attacking the moderates=> overall radicalization' is a pattern which we all should be sufficiently aware of from countless places and movements in the world, not to mention plain common sense.

For this reason, only a very strict policy of containment (which has an immigration element to it) will prove effective while we still have a chance.

Unfortunately, containment is a rather 'reactive' response. The core of the issue is at the core of the religion concerned. As long as it teaches as it does, this will be a recurring phenomena. We might contain the current generation, but then the new younger firebrands will begin to ask "Our wonderful religion teaches thus and so.. WHYYYY are our leaders not doing more to achieve this ?" and the cycle continues.

So, to repeat my opening statement.. anti terror laws these days need to be far reaching and effective.

Hmm... I may be wrong, but I thought the Tamil Tigers are Hindu, rather than Muslim. However, that doesn't really detract from BOAZ_David's point, i.e. that terrorists of all forms act as if they are authorised by their religions, even if that is not really the case.

I'm thinking of, in addition to the Al Qaeda creeps, Hindu terrorists like the Tamil Tigers, the IRA and UFF Christian terrorists in Ireland, the anti-abortion Christian terrorists who blow up abortion clinics in the US, the Zionist terrorists who kill Palestinian women and kids, etc etc.

Maybe we should just ban all religions, or at least the fundamentalist versions of them.

I believe you are right giaman, the Tamils are Hindu and suicide bombers were used in WW2 by the Japaneses, also in Vietnam and just about every conflict before or after. Once again we have one faction of religion accusing another of violence without looking at the true facts. It is irrelevant as to the form of religion, they are all the same, violent, repressive and evil. All of them fail to provide one scrap of evidence as to the benefits religion has brought to the world.

The available evidence is totally the opposite, you will not find a time during the last 2000 years where the religious have not been involved in the wholesale slaughter of life on this planet. The true solution would be to ban religion, but then we put ourselves in their place, trying to force our ways onto them. Religion should only be followed within the home and designated places of worship, not on the streets or in advertising, or by annoying people in their homes. It should be personal worship and not mass control, which is the ideal of all religions.

It is difficult to get rational discussion from the religious, because they have their heads in the sand, and their bums firmly seated in the past. They are not rational nor even understandable, nothing they say has any sense in it at all. If you are going to have vilification and anti terrorism laws, then those laws should stop the religious from vilifying, annoying and terrorising the non religious with their unsupportable rubbish, and constant mental and physical conflicts between the religious factions.